First, here’s the list and report from March 2nd:

Esperfriends

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Creatures (3) 1 Sun Titan 2 Snapcaster Mage Planeswalkers (8) 3 Liliana of the Veil 2 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad 2 Gideon Jura 1 Elspeth Tirel Spells (23) 2 Tragic Slip 3 Doom Blade 3 Think Twice 3 Mana Leak 2 Ratchet Bomb 2 Forbidden Alchemy 1 Oblivion Ring 4 Lingering Souls 3 Day of Judgment Land (26) 3 Evolving Wilds 4 Isolated Chapel 3 Glacial Fortress 3 Seachrome Coast 3 Darkslick Shores 3 Plains 4 Swamp 2 Island 1 Vault of the Archangel Sideboard (15) 2 Nihil Spellbomb 2 Timely Reinforcements 1 Batterskull 2 Curse of Death’s Hold 2 Celestial Purge 1 Consecrated Sphinx 1 Jace, Memory Adept 2 Flashfreeze 1 Revoke Existence 1 Massacre Wurm

Nothing too fancy here, just my take on an archetype that was still sort of forming right after rotation and DKA became legal.

Round 1: Daniel, playing Boros Aggro
This was an original deck, basically a fast White Weenie deck that also ran Red for burn and Hellriders. Basically, I had bad draws both times (definitely should have mulliganed the second game given what I knew was coming) and got run over in about ten minutes. Not what you’d call an auspicious start.
0-1 matches, 0-2 games

Round 2: Andrew, playing BR Vampires
This match was all about early stalling with Lingering Souls and early removal/counters, then taking control with the planeswalkers. In game 1 I had both Gideon and Sorin out, and was able to protect Sorin long enough to get his ultimate, which was pretty much game over. Game 2 I got Lili, Elspeth, and Sorin and just killed him with 3/1 tokens.
1-1 matches, 2-2 games

Round 3: Daniel (obviously a different one), playing RG Kessig
Game 1 was interminable, a really long grinding, close game in which I got him down to 2, but eventually I ran out of counters and ways to kill Nexuses. Game 2 was not short but I had Flashfreezes when I really needed them and got there with Gideon and tokens, but again, it took a while. We were in like turn 3 of the third game when time was called, so we didn’t have a chance to finish that. This is a very tough matchup for this deck; I think it needs more than two Flashfreezes in the sideboard.
1-1-1 matches, 3-3-1 games

Round 4: Jared, playing mono-Black
He won the roll and opened with a pair of Gravecrawlers early, but I got a turn two Ratchet Bomb followed by Liliana, and after I blew up his guys and we both discarded (I discarded a Lingering Souls, then flashed it back), I was able to keep his board clear with a combination of Lili, Leaks, and an O Ring, and got there with tokens. Game 2 I don’t actually remember hardly at all, but my life total reads 12-18-24 and his reads 14-8-0 so I’m pretty sure it involved Batterskull.
2-1-1 matches, 5-3-1 games

My breakers were just good enough to squeeze in at 8th since we only had four rounds of swiss, but with the lighter turnout, only top 4 paid out. So I had to win…

Quarterfinals: AJ, playing mono-White Humans
Game 1 was a bit of a back-and-forth that got a little annoying when he dropped an Angelic Overseer. I was able to chump a couple turns with spirit tokens until eventually I got Gideon and a spot removal spell to take out all his other humans, and then I had to use Sorin’s ultimate just to kill the stupid Overseer. However, once I did that, I had an active Gideon and a badass angel. He actually killed the angel, though I don’t remember how, but it was too little, too late. Game 2 he got off to a fast start and got me all the way down to 4 before I could cast a Day and wipe the board, which I followed with a Gideon and flashed back a Leak with a Snapcaster and just killed him with the pair.
3-1-1 matches, 7-3-1 games

Semis: Festus, playing Esper control
His build was totally different, and it’s a deck he’d been playing at FNM for a while before DKA rotated in. Both my son and I had actually kind of owned him lately, so I figured it was time for karmic retribution, and it was. My draws weren’t all that good, but it sort of doesn’t matter since nobody did anything for a while. I got really behind on land in game 1 and he just got to the point where he could play around my Leaks and I couldn’t play around his, so he was able to grind it out. Game 2 was a little more interesting because I mulled down to five and while I didn’t have much board presence for a lot of the game, whenever I did I had Vault active so I was gaining life. Eventually he was able to kill everything of mine and got a Sphinx out on me, and I just could not overcome the card advantage generated.
3-2-1 matches, 7-5-1 games

Not great, but not too bad. The next time I got to FNM, March 16th, I played JunkPod, which was a lot of fun but is, as Pod decks can be, a little inconsistent, and I went 3-2 and missed the top 8. The game of the night for me was getting a Stonehorn Dignitary under a Mimic Vat against B/u Zombies. He didn’t realize right away that it was a lock since he had a couple Ratchet Bombs, but of course I just podded the Dignitary token into an Acidic Slime in before the third counter.

This most recent Friday, March 23rd, I decided to try Frites since I’ve never played a reanimator deck before. It’s a strange choice for me since there’s not only no blue, but no planeswalkers in the deck, for two weeks in a row! Actually what really got me feeling weird about is the complete lack of main deck removal of any kind. I thought it would be an entertaining challenge. Here’s the list I played:

Frites

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Creatures (18) 4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim 4 Birds of Paradise 1 Llanowar Elves 1 Flayer of the Hatebound 1 Inferno Titan 1 Grave Titan 2 Wurmcoil Engine 3 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One Spells (19) 4 Faithless Looting 4 Mulch 3 Tracker’s Instincts 4 Lingering Souls 4 Unburial Rites Land (23) 6 Forest 2 Plains 1 Rootbound Crag 4 Blackcleave Cliffs 4 Copperline Gorge 4 Razorverge Thicket 2 Darkslick Shores Sideboard (15) 1 Inferno Titan 2 Sun Titan 4 Strangleroot Geist 2 Ray of Revelation 2 Thrun, the Last Troll 3 Ancient Grudge 1 Massacre Wurm

Yes, there are only 3 Elesh Norns in there, because I only own three. I filled the fourth slot with Sheoldred, which seemed an OK substitute. I also played one Flayer of the Hatebound because I thought it would be cute, but I literally never saw it all night long. This week we had a really good turnout, meaning six rounds of Swiss, paying all the top 8.

Round 1: Zach, playing GB Pod
Game 1 there were no shenanigans but I just beat him up with fat things including a very timely Inferno Titan. Game 2 he got a turn 2 Mayor and a turn 4 Bloodline Keeper, and I could not find an Elesh and he just swarmed me. Game 3 I managed to unearth both a Grave Titan and an Inferno Titan and they got there, amazingly enough.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games

Round 2: Craig, playing WB weenies/tokens
Game 1 I Rited out Sheoldred on like turn 5 and she slowly ate all his weenies, and of course he couldn’t block her so it didn’t go well. Game 2 I unearthed an early Elesh but she only stuck around for one attack before he got her under an O Ring, and of course I hadn’t boarded the Rays because I’m an idiot. I hard-cast a Wurmcoil which got in once before also eating an O Ring. I flashed back a Looting to get me an Inferno Titan, and he carried me the rest of the way.
2-0 matches, 4-1 games

Round 3: Jeff, playing mono-Green
He was beating me down with a few green dudes, and had just gotten Thrun to go with a couple Strangleroots and a 4/4 Elder and I drew a Looting, so I could pitch the Elesh in my hand and flash back the Rites that was in the graveyard. Next turn I got a Wurmcoil, and while he could block it with Thrun, the life gain of 8 per turn got pretty stupid. I got a second Wurmcoil and got up to 65 life before I finally killed him. Game 2 I got the god draw and got a turn 3 Elesh, which wiped his board and pretty much got me home. Mono Green seems like it ought to be pretty much an auto-win since they have neither disruption nor removal, but just wait…
3-0 matches, 6-1 games

Round 4: Daniel, playing Bant Spirits
This is a freaking cool deck, and I want to build it an play it, but of course when we started I had no idea what was going on. He won the die roll and came out with turn 1 Evolving Wilds, so I still had no idea. However, I wasn’t too worried because I had the god draw: two mana dorks, Elesh, Unburial Rites, Looting, two land. If I draw a land, it’s turn 3 Elesh, and my second draw was land. However, I actually lost this game! How, you ask? Well, his turn 2, he played a second land and two Birds. I of course, came back with a second mana dork and used my turn 1 Birds to play Looting, pitching Elesh and Rites. He went land, Geist of St. Traft. He had two Birds untapped. Now, what I had drawn off the Looting was two lands, so I had no action and felt like I had to go for it on my turn 3 because I couldn’t just let him hit me with Giest over and over again. So I went for it, and he tapped both birds and Leaked the Rites. Ugh. He then followed this up with: hit me for six, play land, Consecrated Sphinx, go. I drew… whatever, it really didn’t matter, and turn 5 he came back with Metamorph, copying Sphinx. I scooped. Game 2 was almost as stupid since he had a turn two Geist off a Bird, and of course I did not have a turn 3 Elesh to come back with. This was a merciless beating. Counterspells can be a problem…
3-1 matches, 6-3 games

Round 5: AJ, playing UR DelverBlade
I won the roll, which was good because he had Delvers on turns 1 and 2, but they didn’t flip right away. I had no interesting graveyard action going, but had some mana dorks and three big hitters: Wurmcoil, Inferno Titan, and Elesh. He knew this because he Probe’d me (ouch!) on turn 2. I figured my best bet was to just cast them into his Leaks and hope I drew a Rites so I had a shot to reanimate. Turns out he only had leaks for Wurmcoil and the Titan, but no leak for Elesh, which wiped his board. Now, I was at 9 when this happened, so I was still possibly in burn range, so I was swinging with Elesh and the mana dorks, and did Mulch into a Titan and a Rites, and I Rited out the Titan when he was at 3 so he didn’t have a chance to burn me to death since he had double-incinerated me to three. Game 2 I opened with four land, Elesh, Sheoldred, and a Titan, which I probably shouldn’t have kept, but I did anyway. Well, he mulled to four with only one land, though he did get a turn 1 Delver. I drew a Lingering Souls which I used to buy time until I could cast the fatness, and the first attempt at Elesh (I had drawn both the other ones in the interim) resolved, and that was it.
4-1 matches, 7-3 games

Round 6: ID
I got rounded up to play one of the 4-0-1s and was in like fourth place anyway, so we were guaranteed in so we drew.
4-1-1 matches, 7-3 games

Quarterfinals: Han, playing mono-Green
He was a friend of Jeff’s (from round 3), was playing the same deck, and he saw me crush this deck in round 3, so he wasn’t thrilled with the matchup. I was cautiously optimistic since this should have been an easy one for me. I lost the roll, mulled a zero-lander, and opened with: Elesh, Rites, Birds, and three lands. So all I needed was a Looting or getting anything really good dumped into the graveyard by a Mulch or an Instincts. His fist four turns were: Bird, Strangleroot, Strangleroot, zenith for Dungrove Elder. My first three draws were: land, land, land… I basically goldfished for him and died with nothing in the graveyard at all besides the Birds, which valiantly chomped once but it didn’t matter. Game 2 I opened with land, mana dorks, and a couple Mulches. Mulched on turn 2, saw a Massacre Wurm and three land. He had the exact same stupid start. I mulched again into four land. Turn 3 I played the Tracker’s Instinct I drew… into a mana dork and three lands. I drew a Looting, looted, drew two lands, pitched two lands, flashed back Looting… into two more lands. When the game ended, I had seen 23 cards of my deck, 15 of which were lands, 4 of which were the graveyard-fillers, one of which was the Wurm, and three mana dorks. Wow. Yes, I know, it’s a Bad Beats story, but seriously, Frites should win like 85% against mono-green. Very disappointing.
4-2-1 matches, 7-5 games

Some notes on the deck:
• Flayer is cute but I never cast it. Should have been another Inferno Titan, he’s amazing and should have been a two-of. I sided him in for literally every match, though of course I never saw UB control.
• I have no idea what I was thinking with the Sun Titans in the sideboard. The only thing they could get back is Strangleroot Geist, which is itself a sideboard card. I think something for the mirror, like Nihil Spellbomb or Surgical Extraction, would be better, or maybe weenie sweepers like Whipflare or Slagstorm.
• Should have run some removal in the sideboard, probably Sever the Bloodline.
• I didn’t really like Tracker’s Instinct very much and tended to side out two of them for an Inferno Titan and the Massacre Wurm. I never actually played the Wurm, but Inferno Titan was, as I said, an all-star. Anyway, really glad I didn’t play 4 Instincts.

Let me preface this by saying that I am, in general, a big fan of Wizards of the Coast. I returned to playing Magic: The Gathering with the release of Zendikar after a ten-year absence, and overall I think the decisions made by the folks in Renton since I have been back have been very good. Even when the decisions haven’t been great, you have also shown a willingness to listen and adapt in response to feedback.

I sincerely hope you will be willing to do so again.

Last week I read the following announcement from Tan Thor Jen, the developer of Decked Builder software for iPhone, iPad, and MacOS: Legal Issues and Removal of Deck Building Functionality.

Let me start by saying that I understand that it is important for Wizards of the Coast to protect their intellectual property (IP) and their brand. However, I think this is a bad decision for WotC as it negatively impacts the MTG community. It strikes me as highly unlikely that the timing of this is a coincidence, given that WotC just released their own iPhone application that supports deckbuilding. While the threat of litigation to eliminate competing products (particularly those that depend upon WotC’s IP) is a legitimate business tactic and WotC is certainly within their rights to do so, in this case it appears both inconsistent and unnecessary.

The move against Decked Builder seems inconsistent in that you, WotC, openly tolerate other products that trade on your IP. For example, the magiccards.info Web site uses card images and text, and clearly is in direct competition with WotC’s own Gatherer Web engine. Of course, WotC does not charge users for Gatherer, so there is no potential lost revenue there. However, WotC does charge for MTG Online, and yet does not appear to taking legal action against Magic Workstation (MWS). MWS is a commercial product that competes directly with WotC’s MTG Online product, and trades on WotC IP. (Cockatrice is a similar free software product.) Why do those products, which are much more high-profile than Decked Builder, get a free pass but Decked Builder doesn’t?

Furthermore, this action seems unnecessary in that, unlike MWS and Cockatrice, I cannot see how this affects WotC’s bottom line. Decked Builder exists on three platforms: iPhone, iPad, and MacOS. Let’s look at each of those spaces.

On the iPhone, the newly-released WotC MTG Toolbox product is free. So how does the presence of Decked Builder possibly impinge on that revenue stream? If you were planning on revenue from that source, why did you make it free? My suspicion there is that having that product be free is intended to help WotC’s primary product, Magic: The Gathering cards. You want customers to have a product that encourages them to play the game, and thus buy cards. The presence of Decked Builder in the marketplace does that, too, though it isn’t a free product. What’s wrong with letting customers pay a little to a third party to get functionality not offered by the WotC app? (For example, the ability to easily share with the iPad and desktop versions via DropBox or iCloud.) Even with Decked Builder in the marketplace, people will still get MTG Toolbox, exactly because it’s free. (I have both.)

On the iPad, WotC has no offering at all, and thus no revenue stream for Decked Builder to cut into.

Finally, there is MacOS. Like with the iPad, WotC has no offering at all, and thus there is no lost revenue here, either. However, here I think the decision cuts deeper. Frankly, the Mac is a platform that has always been under-served by WotC and other MTG-related products. There is no MTG Online for the Mac, nor even Magic Workstation. WotC has zero presence on the Mac and has never given any indication of moving in this direction. WotC derives zero revenue from the Mac.

However, by taking Decked Builder out of this space, WotC will destroy the only high-quality MTG-oriented product on the Mac. While I’m sure it isn’t your intent, doing this sends the message that WotC does not value Mac users. One might even be inclined to believe that WotC is anti-Mac. Please don’t take away the only software the MTG-playing Mac user has! I understand the need to protect your IP, but it’s not like Decked Builder on the Mac is exploiting your IP to your detriment—if anything, it helps sustain and build interest in the game in a community WotC is ignoring, a community that definitely has discretionary dollars. How is that bad for WotC? Don’t you want people with discretionary dollars to be maximally engaged in the game?

It seems to me that MTG, and therefore WotC, is actually much better served by allowing programs like Decked Builder to flourish. Don’t you want your customers to have access to tools that encourage them to play the game, and thus buy cards? Of course you do, that’s the point of the MTG Toolbox app. I promise you, the money I have spent on Decked Builder is not money I would have spent on more cards. If anything, using Decked Builder makes it easier for me to tinker with deck ideas, and thus having access to it encourages me to buy more cards. Exactly how does making it more difficult for me (or anyone else, especially Mac users) to build and share decks help serve WotC’s financial interests?

In light of this, I urge you to reconsider your stance. Let Decked Builder be. Make them change the icon that impinges on your logo, fine, but please allow the software to continue to include deckbuilding functionality. Please let us, Decked Builder’s customers, keep our favorite MTG app. It encourages us to play, and thus buy more cards. Isn’t that what you want?

Mike Byrne
Magic player, WotC customer, Decked Builder user
(Note: I have no association or contact with Decked Builder other than being a thrilled customer.)

So, the big game. The spread is the Patriots by 2.5. While I will be rooting for the Pats, frankly, looking at how the two teams match up, I cannot figure out how the Pats are supposed to win. Nearly every matchup in the game favors the Giants, and they also come in as the “hot” team, which has been a reasonable predictor of Super Bowl champions in recent years. New England has an edge at quarterback, sure, but Eli has been very solid this season and is 7-3 in the playoffs, so I don’t think it’s all that much of an edge. The Pats also have an edge at tight end, even with Gronk not at 100%, but the Giants have a huge edge at wide receiver, which I think more than compensates. Neither team has a particularly impressive running game; I’d give a slight edge to the G-men there. On the defensive side, the Giants have a better line, by quite a bit. New England’s secondary has improved a fair amount over the season, but since they started out as “blindingly awful” they’re only up to “average;” no edge there. I don’t really see anywhere on the field where the Patriots are dramatically better than the Giants and several places where they are markedly worse.

That usually means it’s a straightforward pick. The problem here is the spread. If the Giants are better all over the place, why is New England favored? The Giants are nearly a consensus pick among NFL analysts, pundits, and former players, and yet somehow they’re giving points? So, what does Vegas know that everybody else doesn’t? I have to say, when in doubt, I trust Vegas over pretty much every ESPN talking head. The handicappers in the desert are a lot more accountable for their decisions than the TV pontificators. I always find it disturbing when the spread goes against what everyone else is saying.

Of course, the point of the spread isn’t really to pick the winner, it’s to equalize the betting on both sides. Are there really that many more people willing to bet on the Pats in the face of fairly compelling evidence to the contrary? It’s not like the Cowboys are involved, which always messes up the spread (apparently, being rational and being a Cowboys fan are inconsistent positions). The whole situation smacks of something fishy going on, and with Belichick involved, that can’t be good.

So, the question is, does the fishiness outweigh essentially all of the football evidence? The Giants are better and they should win. Not only that, but if you pick the clearly better team, you get points. I’d pick the Patriots just on the whole oddity of it but for those points. It’s really hard to give points to the team I think is actually better. But then, it’s just a pick, after all, I’m not actually putting down a large sum of money on it. If I had to put down real money I’d take the points an the Giants. But since I’m rooting for the Patriots, I might as well pick them, too. It’s irrational and I know it’s irrational but I’m going that way anyway.

I hope New England wins on a last-second field goal to cover by a half a point. That’d be awesome.

Go Pats!

Anyway, I’m back, and since I played Mono-Black Infect last time around, I had to play something different. I find it humorous that Mage-Blade is now a real deck, as I designed a deck along the same lines right when Innistrad came out. It was Esper and more of a control build, and definitely not as good as the current versions, but some of the same concepts are there. Here’s that list, which my computer tells me I generated back on October 7th:

Slax

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Creatures (10) 3 Invisible Stalker 4 Snapcaster Mage 2 Geist of Saint Traft 1 Sun Titan Spells (24) 3 Doom Blade 2 Go for the Throat 4 Mana Leak 3 Think Twice 2 Dissipate 3 Forbidden Alchemy 2 Midnight Haunting 2 Oblivion Ring 2 Sword of Feast and Famine 1 Angelic Destiny Land (26) 4 Darkslick Shores 2 Inkmoth Nexus 3 Island 4 Isolated Chapel 1 Moorland Haunt 5 Plains 4 Seachrome Coast 3 Swamp Sideboard (15) 2 Tribute to Hunger 3 Timely Reinforcements 3 Day of Judgment 2 Curse of Death’s Hold 3 Oblivion Ring 1 Consecrated Sphinx 1 Dissipate

The mana base was terrible and there were too many cards with double-colored casting costs, and it never tested well, but I’m gratified to know that in the long run it had the right direction in mind. I obviously didn’t recognize how amazing Vapor Snag is, and wasn’t up on Delver, but I got Snapcaster/Blade/Haunt/Stalker/Geist, anyway. So, here’s what I actually played:

Mage-Blade

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Creatures (13) 4 Delver of Secrets 2 Invisible Stalker 4 Snapcaster Mage 3 Geist of Saint Traft Spells (26) 3 Gitaxian Probe 3 Gut Shot 2 Mental Misstep 4 Ponder 4 Vapor Snag 4 Mana Leak 2 Runechanter’s Pike 3 Midnight Haunting 1 Sword of War and Peace Land (21) 4 Glacial Fortress 9 Island 3 Moorland Haunt 1 Plains 4 Seachrome Coast Sideboard (15) 1 Celestial Purge 1 Disperse 1 Dissipate 1 Divine Offering 1 Gut Shot 2 Negate 2 Oblivion Ring 2 Phantasmal Image 2 Ratchet Bomb 2 Timely Reinforcements

Note that this is not Gindy’s list from SCG Atlanta, though it is obviously similar. My local meta is pretty aggro-heavy and I really wanted main deck Missteps, and Swords are a little slow at a cost of 3, so I cut down to only one of those.

Five rounds of Swiss, cut to top 8.

Round 1: Mike, playing RDW
Game 1 I got turn 3 Geist, got a Pike on it, and that carried it on my last turn to live. Game 2 he burned me out with a large Shrine on his last turn to live. Game 3 I got a Stalker early and we were pretty even after that, until eventually I got a Pike on the Stalker and that won me the race thanks to a little help from Vapor Snag.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games

Round 2: Scott, playing RDW
Game 1 was very close; he got there because of a Spikeshot Elder—I didn’t realize anyone played those anymore, but it seems very good in this matchup; many Spirits died to it. I drew very badly in game 2, missed turn 3 land drop with only an Island and a Haunt out, then drew another Haunt, and missed the next land drop, and finally drew a second Island, but it was too late.
1-1 matches, 2-3 games

Round 3: Chris, playing Tempered Steel
Game 1 he got double Tempered Steel but was light on dudes and with Vapor Snags, a Geist, and a couple chumps, I got there pretty easily. Game 2 was a near thing. He opened turn 1 with triple Memnite. I played very conservatively, holding back counters and an O Ring in case of Tempered Steel. He did stick an Etched Champion but I had Spirits and Delvers to block the rest of his team, and got there with a flipped Delver wielding a Pike.
2-1 matches, 4-3 games

Round 4: Festus, playing Esper Control
Similar in spirit to the list LSV has been playing on CFB. Festus is a great guy but a slow player and I was worried about how much time we’d have to finish this. Game 1 was close; I had him down to 2 with a Gut Shot in my hand and another in the graveyard, but was facing down a Sphinx and just could not draw either a Snapcaster or the third Gut Shot. I spent the entire game with a dead Misstep in my hand. Oops. Game 2 I had decent early pressure via a turn 1 Delver, which flipped turn 2, and drew just enough permission to keep him off his big plays, which I knew were coming courtesy of a very timely Probe. Game 3 was a near thing. I drew all 4 Snapcasters through the course of the game, snapping back two counters and two Midnight Hauntings. The end was zany: Haunting end of his turn, swung my turn, he cast Day on his turn, I snapped back the Haunting end of his turn, swung, he snapped back Day, I used the Snapcaster with the Haunt, and also snapped back the Haunting to swing for the lethal 5 on the first turn of extra time. Whew.
3-1 matches, 6-4 games

Round 5: Paul, playing RDW
Since we were both guaranteed a spot in the top 8, we ID’d.
3-1-1 matches, still 6-4 games

Quarterfinals: Tyler playing WW
Not even Haunted Humans, just straight-up White Weenie with Honor of the Pure and a lot of 1 and 2 drops. Game 1 I got counters and Gut Shots and flipped a Delver early and pretty much sailed in. Game 2 was close, we went back and forth, and unfortunately the Timely and the O Ring in my hand were dead because I never drew a source of white, and he killed me on his last turn to live. Game 3 I opened with both Missteps and a Snapcaster, and countered three of his early plays, Leaked another, and pretty much cruised through with Vapor Snags.
4-1-1 matches, 8-5 games

Semifinals: Kevin, playing Uw Delver Illusions
Game 1 he kept a one-lander and was tapped out on my turn 3, so I put down a Geist. I got a Pike on it and he went all the way in three turns. Game 2 I remember my exact opening hand: Misstep, Gut Shot, Midnight Haunting, Plains, Glacial Fortress, 2 Haunts. He went Island, Delver, I Missteped, he Missteped back, and EOT I Gut Shot his Delver. Whee, five cards out turn 1 before I even played a land. My first draw step was a Leak and then next was a Pike. I Leaked his next play, cast Haunting at the end of his turn 4, put the Pike on one of the tokens. He got in once, then got Vapor Snagged, and the other Spirit carried the Pike to victory.
5-1-1 matches, 10-5 games

It was late and I wanted to get my son home since he had a sleepover the next night, so we split the finals. Not a bad night for a deck I had never played before and threw together right before heading over to FNM. The other nice thing was that last weekend at GP Austin I punted numerous times, but I played pretty clean Magic tonight. Not perfect, of course, but a lot better than I played last weekend.

A few deck comments:
• I’ve played some UR Delver and some UW Delver Illusions lately, and I definitely like this better than Illusions.
• Vapor Snag is one of the best cards in Standard when it’s in this deck. I think I boarded in the Disperse against almost everything, so I might go to main deck for that.
• Gitaxian Probe was great against the control deck, but continues to underwhelm me against everything else. I think 2 would be plenty, and zero might even be right.
• I didn’t like Ratchet Bomb out of the sideboard, but then I didn’t play against Haunted Humans.
• I was very happy with the decision to run only one Sword, and I could see cutting it completely. Pike is great, though. Pike plus Geist is amazing.
• Main deck Misstep was great vs. everything except the control deck. I would definitely keep those; there are just so many juicy targets for that right now.

Also, my 11-year-old son Simon played as well. He played Mono-Black Infect, which either I or he have played a few times now. Here’s the current list:

Mono-Black Infect

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Creatures (14) 4 Plague Stinger 2 Spellskite 4 Phyrexian Crusader 2 Whispering Specter 2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon Spells (21) 4 Virulent Wound 1 Contagion Clasp 2 Doom Blade 3 Trigon of Rage 3 Victim of Night 2 Liliana of the Veil 1 Piston Sledge 3 Lashwrithe 2 Tezzeret’s Gambit Land (25) 1 Drowned Catacomb 4 Inkmoth Nexus 20 Swamp Sideboard (15) 2 Surgical Extraction 3 Black Sun’s Zenith 1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon 3 Nihil Spellbomb 2 Spellskite 2 Phyrexian Vatmother 2 Sword of Body and Mind

Here’s how it went for him:

• Won 2-0 vs. a Black-Red Vampires deck, which he said wasn’t a very good deck.
• Won 2-1 vs. Esper Control, my round 4 opponent.
• Lost 2-0 vs. Haunted Humans. Deck is solid against Humans, that was a little odd.
• Lost 2-1 vs. RDW. Apparently drew zero Spellskites in game 3, despite boarding up to 4. Grr.
• Won 2-0 vs. a “weird Quicksilver Amulet deck” in a very fast match.

Not a bad showing, really, considering that he’s 11.

Anyway, here are the decks we played:

Mono-Black Infect

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Creatures (15) 4 Plague Stinger 3 Spellskite 4 Phyrexian Crusader 2 Whispering Specter 2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon Spells (20) 4 Virulent Wound 1 Contagion Clasp 1 Doom Blade 3 Trigon of Rage 3 Victim of Night 2 Liliana of the Veil 1 Piston Sledge 3 Lashwrithe 2 Tezzeret’s Gambit Land (26) 1 Drowned Catacomb 4 Inkmoth Nexus 21 Swamp Sideboard (15) 4 Despise 3 Surgical Extraction 2 Black Sun’s Zenith 1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon 1 Distress 2 Ratchet Bomb 2 Nihil Spellbomb

That’s what I played. My son Simon played this:

Uw Delver Illusions

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Creatures (21) 4 Delver of Secrets 4 Phantasmal Bear 4 Lord of the Unreal 3 Phantasmal Image 4 Snapcaster Mage 2 Geist of Saint Traft Spells (19) 4 Gitaxian Probe 3 Gut Shot 4 Ponder 4 Vapor Snag 4 Mana Leak Land (20) 4 Glacial Fortress 9 Island 3 Moorland Haunt 4 Seachrome Coast Sideboard (15) 2 Dissipate 2 Flashfreeze 1 Gut Shot 2 Mental Misstep 2 Negate 3 Oblivion Ring 3 Stitched Drake

I’ll go over mine first.

Round 1: Audra, playing Kessig Ramp
This is a matchup that I ought to be able to win, but nothing is certain. Game 1 I opened with a Nexus, then a Stinger on turn 2, then a Specter on turn 3. She burned the Specter but I got a Lashwrithe on the Stinger and that carried it. Game 2 she mulled to six and I kept a slightly sketchy hand and ended up paying for it. I ultimately had a huge Phyrexian Crusader with a Lashwrithe on it, but she was generating wolf tokens with a flipped Mayor of Avabruck and they were chumping. She eventually drew a Primeval Titan and got the Kessing she needed to make her Nexus lethal. Game 3 I mulled to six and opened with a Nexus, then a Spellskite, then a Plague Stinger, then a Trigon. The Spellskite kept the Stinger safe from all her burn spells and mostly what she did was ramp and then die to the pumped Stinger. It was good that I had the Stinger/Trigon because I never drew a fourth land at all.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games

Round 2: Josh, playing UG Splinterfright
He was playing something pretty close to the event deck. I opened with Nexus then Stinger, then Spectre and had him pitch four cards, which actually wasn’t all that great since his next card was a Boneyard Wurm, and then he Mulched to make the Wurm a 7/7. However, I got Skittles next and won that race. Game 2 I got the turn 4 kill. Turn 2 Stinger, turn 3 Piston Sledge, turn 4 Trigon for the win. Nice when you know your opponent has minimal removal. The whole match took like 10-15 minutes.
2-0 matches, 4-1 games

Round 3: Simon
So, Simon was 1-1 at this point, and since I was 2-0, I scooped to Simon to not eliminate him. I knew this would make it harder for me, but I figured it was the least I could do for him since the last time we were in an elimination situation for the top 8 he opted to play and I won, which made him pretty unhappy. So this time I gave him the win.
2-1 matches, 4-1 games

Round 4: Chris, playing Solar Flare
Neither of these games were particularly quick. Game 1 we traded back and forth and at one point he Snapcasted back a Mana Leak and that Snapcaster got me down to like 10, but I got a Specter out and ate his hand, then was free to cast a Skittles and that went all the way. Game 2 was kind of a mess in terms of board state but I got out a Lashwrithe, got him tapped out except for one Isolated Chapel, then got out a second Lashwrithe and double-equipped a Nexus for the win.
3-1 matches, 6-1 games

Round 5: John, playing UW Delver Illusions
So, the situation was that if all the 3-1s drew, then one of them would not make it on tiebreaks. My breaks were not that good anyway, and I did this once before only to have my son Simon be the one who missed on tiebreaks, so I decided to play it out even though I knew my matchup wasn’t very good and I knew Simon would draw. It’s not unwinnable, but it’s not great. If they draw a lot of Vapor Snags you can only win if you have a Spellskite out. Game 1 I got a Spellskite, but he got a turn 3 Geist and I had no answers. He smartly Snagged the ‘Skite when it mattered and had a Gut Shot for my one Stinger and I was too far behind for the Skittles to matter. Game 2 I mulled to six and kept an OK hand, but no Spellskite, and he drew three Snags and a Snapcaster and I had no chance.
3-2 matches, 6-3 games

We found out after that if I had drawn, I would have been eighth. Grr. The good news is that Simon finished 7th. Now, he doesn’t take any kind of notes so I don’t have a full report from him, but I know his matchups and his outcomes, so I’ll recap those:

Round 1: Chris playing Mono-U Grand Architect
Simon won this one, though I don’t know many of the details. I guess in game 3 his opponent stalled on two land after Simon had been flooded in game 1.
1-0 matches, 2-1 games

Round 2: Dillon playing BantPod
Simon lost this match, though he should have won it. Late in game 3 Simon had an empty board and his opponent, who had no Pod in play, tapped out to cast a Wurmcoil Engine. Simon, who was stuck on only 3 land, copied the Engine with an Image, but then did NOT use the Vapor Snag in his hand. Dillon of course untapped, played a Pod, and podded into Elesh Norn. Oops.
1-1 matches, 3-3 games

Round 3: Freebie from dad!
2-1 matches, 3-3 games

Round 4: GW Humans
This one also went three games. Apparently in one game that he won, Simon had a Lord out and was able to copy a Hero of Bladehold with an Image, and in another, he had the “Bear, Lord, Image copying Lord” opener.
3-1 matches, 5-4 games

Round 5: Kessig ramp
Simon chose to ID since his opponent was #2 in the standings so Simon figured his breakers would improve and he’d lock up a spot. Turns out he was right.
3-1-1 matches, 5-4 games

Quarterfinals: Dillon, playing BantPod
This was indeed the rematch from round 2. Since I was out of the top 8, I was going to railbird it, but Simon told me that would make him more nervous, so I took off. Simon carried the first game and told me I could come back to watch, which I did. However, I rather wished I hadn’t. Dillon ramped into a turn 3 Thrun, and Simon ended up just chumping that like crazy for the rest of the match, during which time he drew 10 of his 20 lands. I decided not to watch the decider, which Simon carried and apparently played very well.
4-1-1 matches, 7-5 games

Semifinals: John, playing Uw Delver Illusions
John and I had actually talked about these decks between rounds and he was playing a deck that was maybe 3 or 4 cards different than Simon’s in the main deck. John is a strong player so I didn’t give Simon much chance in this and I decided not to watch. Simon apparently made a couple small mistakes in game 1 and lost it badly, corrected them in game 2 and won easily, and then just got blown out in game 3 by virtue of John having a much better draw.
4-2-1 matches, 8-6 games

So Simon finished in the top 4 and got store credit for the first time ever! He got a nice $17.50 and spent it about a dollar at a time on causal singles (for play with his brother and his school buddies) until everyone was going crazy (it was like 1:00 in the morning at this point) and he used his last $3 on a pack of Mirrodin Besieged, from which he pulled a Bonehoard. Hooray Simon!

Next time, though, I think we’ll just ID.

Some comments on the decks, first on the Infect deck:

• I’m fairly convinced this is the right build, or very nearly so, at least in the maindeck. If I were to change anything in the main, I’d consider putting the Specters in the sideboard.
• I still can’t believe that anybody plays this deck without Trigon of Rage, it just seems ridiculously good.
• I’m also not convinced that the builds that run blue (I mean a real amount of blue, not the token here) in order to run Blighted Agent are really better, since then you lose Lashwrithe. Lashwrithe is excellent. Going two-color also raises the opportunity to be color-screwed or get tempo-hosed by lands coming into play tapped—that never happens with this. This is the only mono-colored deck I’ve played in ages and it is amazingly nice to never have those problems. I see the appeal of RDW sometimes.
• I think maybe the sideboard needs a third Spellskite and desperately needs some better set of answers to Illusions. That’s the only matchup I really worry about. RDW can be tricky, too, but Crusader is really good there. I have no good ideas about dealing with the Delver Illusions deck, it’s just a bad matchup. If anyone out there has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Now, some thoughts on the Uw Delver Illusions deck:

• This deck needs a catchier name. “Uw Delver Illusions,” though descriptive, is awful.
• The deck is very strong. It plays a lot like old-school Merfolk, of course, and has both explosive starts and a decent midgame. If the game goes very long then it’s obviously a little weaker.
• Geist of Saint Traft is a really solid card, and should probably be a 3-of rather than a 2-of. I’m thinking of cutting one of the Probes for it.
• Vapor Snag is spectacular in this deck. This is a card that nobody used to play and is now a serious weapon.
• Gut Shot is also surprisingly good. There are way too many 1-toughness creatures in Standard right now.

So, I’ll be brining these two decks with me to play at side events at GP Austin. Who’s going?

First, for anyone reading this who doesn’t know, The Omni Group is an Apple-only software shop that makes what I consider to be some of the best applications out there. OmniOutliner Pro and OmniGraffle Pro for the Mac are absolutely top-notch. In fact, OmniOutliner Pro for the Mac is one of may all-time favorite applications anywhere ever on any computer, right up there with MacWrite Pro back in the day. My hard drive is littered with probably a thousand OmniOutliner documents.

Now, I also love my iPad, and I put off getting one for a long time because Omni hadn’t released OmniOutliner for it. I did finally cave before the release, but I really missed having a top-notch outliner for the iPad.

So, with all that praise floating around, how is OmniOutliner for iPad (hereafter just “OO”)?

Unfortunately, my reaction to is is mixed. While it’s certainly the best dedicated outliner I’ve seen for the iPad, that’s not saying to terribly much, though CarbonFin Outliner is pretty decent. The fundamental problem is that OO doesn’t live up to the Mac version. This is slightly odd for Omni, since the iPad version of OmniFocus is actually far superior to the Mac version, and OmniGraffle is quite comparable on both platforms.

Omni certainly got a lot of things right on the iPad version of Outliner. It generally looks good, it’s responsive, it’s packed with features like full multi-column support, has a good set of starter templates, etc. Omni obviously put a lot of work into it.

But, unfortunately, they didn’t get it all right, and this is where I get into the mixed feelings part. Let me describe what I think are the most major flaws:

The Document Manager
Unfortunately, OO uses the same kind of document manager as Apple’s productivity apps like Pages and Keynote. Unfortunately, it’s not very good. It’s fine when you have only a few documents, but it doesn’t scale very well. As I noted above, I use OO all the time on my desktop, and I want to do that on my iPad as well. Unfortunately it just doesn’t scale. If you have even 30 documents, it becomes very cumbersome to manage. There are no folders and no search facilities, just view by modification date or file name. This is a pretty major stumbling block, and while it is one shared by numerous other iPad apps, i feel it more with OO than with any other app, since I tend to generate lots of outlines. (This is my preferred way to take notes in meetings, for example.) GoodReader is an example of an application that does this much better. No, GoodReader’s document manager isn’t pretty, but it scales a heck of a lot better.

Mac Synchronization
This is also a really important thing for me, to be able to share outlines between my iPad and my Mac(s). OO is pretty bad at this as well. First, it doesn’t support DropBox, which is a shame, only WebDAV and iDisk. (And iDisk is going away anyway. More on that in a bit.) iDisk support isn’t very good, though some of this isn’t Omni’s fault—iDisk has always been a dog for me. The real problem, however, is that it doesn’t actually synchronize at all. It will make a copy of something on iDisk, and you can save a copy of a document to iDisk, but those are only copies. It doesn’t sync. This means I constantly have to check and re-check to see whether the most recent version of any particular document is on iDisk or on the iPad. Again, GoodReader has this problem solved reasonably cleanly, storing a link to the document on the sever and supporting a “sync” button that figures out who’s newer and syncs it.

Now, I would guess that in the future Omni will support iCloud and this will get somewhat better—if you can use iCloud. Unfortunately, for work I still need some old applications that only run under Rosetta, so I can’t upgrade to Lion yet, so I can’t use iCloud. (Also, some of my favorite Mac software isn’t Lion-ready yet, which is a separate rant for another time.)

Mac Incompatibilities
Another other big problem is that there are number of very annoying incompatibilities between the iPad and the Mac that OO simply does not handle well. For example, I find that to look right on the iPad, I need documents zoomed in to about 125%. Unfortunately, when you open that document back up on the Mac, it remains zoomed in at 125%, and there is no way to change the zoom level on the Mac version of OO. Argh! (Actually, I’ve figured out a way to deal with the problem, which qualifies as a horrible hack: If you open the raw XML of the OO document on the Mac with a text editor like BBEdit, you can actually find the setting buried in the XML and change it back to 100%. Not fun.) There are also problems going the other way. If the document on the Mac side is in a font that doesn’t exist on the iPad, it obviously can’t use that font—but then it throws away all font information in the whole document. All the bold, italics, size changes, etc. are wiped out when you open it on the iPad. Look, I understand that Gil Sans (or whatever) doesn’t exist on the iPad, but it’s not like bold doesn’t exist. Why is that information lost?

Missing Functionality/Feature Requests
This might be getting a little nitipicky, but I really like being able to attach audio to my outlines, which is something that is available on the Mac side. As I mentioned, I like to use OO as my note-taking app in meetings, and it would be GREAT to be able to record audio snippets as annotations. I guess this is more of a feature request than missing functionality.

The other thing I desperately want is the ability to print. Amazingly, there are times when I want to be able to have hardcopy, and as far as I can tell, there’s no easy way to do this from OO. It can be done, badly, by exporting the outline to some other app that does know how to print, but again, this is a pain and the results often aren’t quite what I want.

My Other UI Gripe
The last thing on my list is another user interface gripe (the document manager being the first one). One of the most important features of an outliner, from my point of view, is use as a hierarchical checklist. Fortunately, OO supports this, but its support for this is pretty awful from a UI standpoint. Fundamentally, where you want the checkboxes to be is on the left side with the start of each line of text, and you want those checkboxes to indent as the text indents. This is exactly what the Mac version does, and what every even half-decent outliner I’ve seen anywhere else does (including CarbonFin Outliner on the iPad/iPhone). Unfortunately, OO for iPad treats the checkboxes not as a property of each row, but as an entirely separate column, and this column is rendered on the right, away from the leading edge of the text. This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a truly awful bit of UI. Usually Omni is really good about UI stuff (one of the reasons I’m normally such a fan), so this seems very out of character.

Now, despite all those things, I still use OO for iPad fairly regularly. In fact, I even generated the outline for this review on it! It’s still a good iPad app, and it’s still a fairly early release, so I’m optimistic that some of these will be addressed in future updates, though I have concerns about how soon such things will be available given that OO for Mac has been at version 3 since early 2005(!). OmniOutliner for iPad does fall short in some key areas that prevent me from using in the way I would like to use it. Most of those issues are ironically enough that OO for iPad is difficult to use with the Mac version of OmniOutliner. If your planned use of OO for iPad is as a standalone, then I’d rate it higher. But using it with the Mac version is frustrating and klunky, not things I generally associate with Omni Group products.

UR Delver

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Creatures (15) 4 Delver of Secrets 2 Grim Lavamancer 2 Stromkirk Noble 4 Snapcaster Mage 3 Chandra’s Phoenix Spells (23) 4 Galvanic Blast 4 Ponder 2 Vapor Snag 4 Incinerate 4 Mana Leak 1 Negate 4 Brimstone Volley Land (23) 1 Ghost Quarter 9 Island 9 Mountain 4 Sulfur Falls Sideboard (15) 2 Manic Vandal 2 Dismember 2 Spellskite 3 Flashfreeze 2 Stromkirk Noble 1 Steel Sabotage 3 Arc Trail

It’s 61 cards because I meant to take out one Island for a Ghost Quarter but I miscounted and didn’t realize it until I was shuffling up for the first match. I should have stopped and fixed it, but I didn’t. My bad.

If I had had more time beforehand I would have tried to work in a couple copies of Desperate Ravings which seems good in this deck, but I really didn’t have time to tinker with it and wasn’t sure what to take out. As has been the norm lately, I didn’t have a chance to playtest it at all beforehand and played it cold. I know, I know, that’s a horrible strategy, but it’s where I am life-wise right now.

5 rounds, cut to top 8.

Round 1: Michael, playing homebrew Naya Golems
I have to say that I don’t know very much about this deck. I guess he did OK with it overall, but mostly what I saw out of it was land. Both games he cast Rampant Growth on turn 2 to get his third color and thereafter mostly drew land. Game 1 he dropped an Adaptive Automaton naming “golem” and I never saw another creature. Game 2 I got turn 1 Delver, flip, turn 3 Delver, flip on a Galvanic Blast. I hit him down to 7, he cast Day, I Volleyed him down to 2 and Blasted for the win. I took zero damage total. Good start on luck and did kill pretty quickly both games, but not exactly a strong test of the deck.
1-0 matches, 2-0 games

Round 2: Zack, playing GB homebrew
Zach is maybe 15 years old and a slightly awkward teen, but basically a good kid as far as I can tell. Game 1 I flashed in a Snapcaster early to either counter or burn something and he got in a few times before eating some removal spell, which I followed up with another one, then a Delver which I flipped off a Ponder, then finished with burn. Game 2 was more about permission and removal on my end, letting me poke away with little guys until I had him at 5 and won on a Volley. First point of note: this deck definitely punishes bad decks.
2-0 matches, 4-0 games

Round 3: Paul, playing RDW
Paul is a good player and definitely knows how to pilot RDW, which is not as brainless as many people think. Game 1 we had a good back-and-forth but in the end he drew more burn than I did, which isn’t really a surprise, and he took it home while still at 7 life. Game 2 I was very land-light, stuck on 3 for many turns, but he got flooded and my early Snapcaster (brought back a Blast) went most of the way. Game 3 was awful. He got a really fast start, I didn’t, and my Delver sat for four turns in a row of drawing land. I did not get there, but overall it was a close match, as game 1 really could have gone either way.
2-1 matches, 5-2 games

Round 4: Weylin, playing Haunted Humans
Weylin is also a strong player and the Humans deck can be very good; he smashed me with it last time I played FNM. Game 1 I got a turn 1 Delver and flipped it turn 2, burned all his guys as they came out, and finished him off with another Volley. Game 2 he got the god draw, or at least a very good one: Champion of the Parish on turn 1 and a second Champion and a Doomed Traveler on turn 2, then a Grand Abolisher. I never really caught up with that. Game 3 was closer, and we both made some small mistakes that might have swung it. I opened with a Stromkirk Noble, him with a Traveler. I know his turn 2 was another Traveler but turn 3 he went for Geist of Saint Traft and I Leaked it. (That was his mistake.) I followed with a second Noble and he followed with a Grand Abolisher (which is what he should have used to draw out the Leak). We exchanged blows a bit, he got my larger Noble with an O Ring and then I drew all three Phoenixes. I did screw up in that something died when I had a Volley in hand and I volleyed the Abolisher rather than sending 5 at him, but the three Phoenixes were too much in the air for him to keep up and I won anyway.
3-1 matches, 7-3 games

Round 5: ID
My opponent did the math, figured out we’d both be in, and so I accepted the ID. This turned out to be a mistake, because my 10 year old was 2-2 but won in the fifth round and finished 9th. If I had played, then he would have gotten in ahead of the loser of my match. (He was playing mono-Black Infect, by the way.)
3-1-1 matches

Quarterfinals: Joe, playing UB Control
Joe is almost certainly the best regular player in the store and my nemesis—I rarely beat him, because he’s better than me. It’s a game with luck, sure, but there’s enough skill difference here that it matters. Anyway, his build has Reassembling Skeleton and Sword of Feast and Famine, plus the usual suite of counters, card draw, and spot removal, a very tricky matchup. I mulled to six and kept a one-lander because it had three Delvers in it. Unfortunately, I could not get one to flip and Joe had all the early answers he needed for them (he runs Dead Weight main and had one, as well as a Ratchet Bomb, ugh) and even with a Ponder in the opener, I failed to get on enough early pressure and then fell too far behind in the land race. Game 2 was more competitive, as I got in a few hits here and there and had a Phoenix running, but he managed to get a Wurmcoil Engine, though he tapped out for it. He was at 6 life and I didn’t have the damage I needed to finish him. The only answer I had in my hand was a Vapor Snag, and what I should have done was Snag the Wurmcoil right away, rather than letting him untap and doing in response to combat, since he just Leaked the Snag. The six life he gained was enough to keep him out of burn range for a bit, and I never got there, ultimately dying to the 6/6. i probably should have won that game. Oops.
3-2-1 matches, 7-5 games

So, not bad, but certainly not great. Rounds 3 and 4 could easily have gone the other way. I probably could have won game 2 in the quarters if I hadn’t punted, but I still think the UB deck has the edge in game 3, at least against this build.

So, the deck. It’s a style I love, but I’m not in love with this specific build. Some thoughts:
• Galvanic Blast, which is really Shock in this deck, is really subpar. Incinerate isn’t l that great, either. This deck wants Lightning Bolt so badly it’s painful. If I were to play this again, I’d cut the Shocks completely, probably cut the Incinerates to 2 or 3, and run some mix of Arc Trail, Gut Shot, and maybe Geistflame.
• I have mixed feelings about Stromkirk Noble. When he’s good (turn 1, vs. humans), he’s fantastic, but otherwise he’s underwhelming.
• Brimstone Volley is amazing, but a little costly for this deck. 3 might be enough.
• Ponder is great with Delver, of course, but not so hot otherwise. I’d go to 3 and run a couple Desperate Ravings as well.
• I didn’t really like the sideboard all that much. Going to 4 Nobles vs. Haunted Humans was great and and Arc Trail very good in multiple matchups, and Flashfreeze has its place, too, but otherwise I’m not so sure. Manic Vandal and Steel Sabotage seem especially suspect.

Of course, I wrote this, and then a UR Delver list made top 4 of the SCG Open in St. Louis. That list is pretty interesting in that it completely foregoes Stromkirk Noble and uses a burn package more like what I’d switch to. The loss of Noble means the deck can lean on more blue mana and can thus support the Psychic Barriers, but seems like it might make Phoenix harder to cast. I like the sideboard Ancient Grudge plan but I’m not sure about 2 main deck Satchels. Don’t get me wrong, I love Satchel, but that seems like a sideboard card vs. control decks more than a main deck choice; I’d probably swap for the Arc Trails. The loss of Noble also seems like it’d make the deck softer to Humans, but I guess that’s what Mental Misstep is in the board for, and main deck Gut Shot probably also helps.

Anyway, it’s a great deck to play and I think it has solid potential to keep evolving well as the format evolves. The format, by the way, is fantastic. There are so many viable deck choices right now; the format feels completely wide open, and I love that.

But on Sundays, my FLGS Montag’s Games runs Modern, or tries to—it doesn’t always fire. However, today it did, and I managed to be able to be there for it. It went well and so I thought it would be worth a short report. As the title suggests, i played Mythic Conscription, here’s the list:

Mythic Conscription

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Creatures (25) 4 Birds of Paradise 4 Noble Hierarch 3 Fauna Shaman 4 Lotus Cobra 4 Knight of the Reliquary 2 Rhox War Monk 4 Sovereigns of Lost Alara Spells (11) 2 Path to Exile 2 Bant Charm 2 Cryptic Command 2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant 1 Gideon Jura 2 Eldrazi Conscription Land (24) 2 Celestial Colonnade 4 Forest 1 Hallowed Fountain 3 Island 1 Marsh Flats 4 Misty Rainforest 1 Mystic Gate 2 Plains 2 Treetop Village 3 Verdant Catacombs 1 Wooded Bastion Sideboard (15) 2 Nature’s Claim 2 Dispel 3 Mana Leak 2 Qasali Pridemage 2 Rule of Law 2 Creeping Corrosion 2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence

Ideally, the deck would have more shocklands in it (I own a total of 4, three of which are Sacred Foundry and live in my Modern Boros deck) and would run a pair of Vendilion Cliques in the main deck and the War Monks would actually be in the sideboard.

This was one of my favorite Standard decks when it was legal, from what was my favorite Standard environment, the post-Rise, pre-M11 world, as detailed here. I will say that the current Standard environment is almost as good with a nice variety of viable decks. I was worried about Standard once Zendikar rotated because I’m not a big fan of Scars block, but Innistrad seems to be dominating the environment (with the exception of infect) and so it’s been fine.

Anyway, 10 players, 4 rounds of Swiss, cut to top 4.

Round 1: Festus, playing 4-color control
Game 1 was about me drawing not very many threats, but him drawing mostly land and a Tarmogoyf, but I had the Path for that and pulled it off. Game 2 we had a bit of a board stall after he had used Bribery to take a Sovereigns out and Threads of Disloyalty to take a Cobra, but he made a mistake swinging into a pair of KotRs and I could fetch to pump both of them. Then he Cliqued me on my upkeep and took a Conscription out of my hand, leaving me with a Soveregns… and I topdecked the land I needed to cast it, and crashed in with a huge Knight. Not sure why he didn’t take the Sovereigns, but I’ll take it.
1-0 matches, 2-0 games

Round 2: Jeff, playing Affinity
Jeff’s build is a Wu build with Tempered Steel. Game 1 I punted because when I tapped out to cast a Sovereigns and swing for 19 (putting him at 1, of course), I tapped wrong and tapped a BoP, leaving a Hierarch untapped. I was at 8. Unfortunately, he had two Signal Pests out and I had no way to block fliers. He topdecked a blue source for Master of Etherium, and had just enough artifacts in play to swing for lethal using counters from his Ravager. Grr. Game 2 I put up a good fight and had him down to 7, but he had three Inkmoth Nexuses out, and then got a Tempered Steel and I died to poison. Grr.
1-1 matches, 2-2 games

Round 3: Andre, playing TurboFog
Look, I try to be nice, but Andre is an annoying jerk who also had just beaten my 10-year-old son and was kind of a dick about it, so I was determined to kick his ass… which I did. Game 1 he played a Rites of Flourishing and relatively early in the game (turn 5?) I hard-cast a Conscription on a fairly large Knight and while he fogged a couple times, the annihilator triggers wiped him out and I finished with a Sovereigns giving the Knight double Conscription. Game 2 I ramped into an early Gideon and had two Bant Charms and a Dispel for any fog effects, and won easily. Good.
2-1 matches, 4-2 games

Round 3: Mike, playing RDW
Game 1 I didn’t have a great draw and he slowly burned me to death. Game 2 was really interesting and was my win of the day. I shut down his early Lavamancer with Linvala, but in order to prevent beatings by bigger creatures, he had sided in an Ensnaring Bridge and he got it. He then emptied his hand, which was huge as I had both Elspeth and Gideon out. The key play was me getting a Fauna Shaman and him not burning it. I used the Shaman to tutor for Sovereigns. He didn’t think it was a big deal, as he had zero cards. However, I had a Birds out, which can swing with its zero power, and then become huge due to the Conscription and the exalted trigger. He burnt me down to 4, but I drew another Bird (if I hadn’t drawn it, I would have tutored for it) and ended it with another massive swing. Game 3 he once again burnt me down to 4 but I had Elspeth and a very big Knight and won the game with two swings, one for 9 and one for 11.
3-1 matches, 6-3 games

Semifinals: Jeremiah, playing WW
He won the roll and made a Savannah Lions… err, Elite Vanguard on turn 1. I took a couple hits from it but got a Rhox War Monk and a Knight out. He came back with a Hero of Bladehold, but I got Sovereigns and hit with a huge Monk, bringing him to 4 and me to 30. Game 2 he started with a Vanguard again, and I got a Hierarch into a turn 2 Monk. He used Journey to Nowhere (not Path, apparently he didn’t want to ramp me) to take out the Monk after I hit him with it once. I came back with a Pridemage, and he swung in with the Vanguard and I sac’d the cat to kill the Journey and blocked, going back up to 21 life. My next few turns were Cobra, fetchland, Sovereigns, swing for 15 with lifelink, GG.
4-1 matches, 8-3 games

The other semis paired Jeff and Festus, and they were clearly going to take awhile. My son and I wanted to head home to be able to have dinner with the family, so they agreed that the winner would split with me, and I used my winnings for a Temple Garden, so next time around I’ll have one more shockland, which is nice.

So, since I never play the same thing twice in a row, and I am now determined to play @Smi77y builds with some regularity, I figured I’d go with his Mono Black Infect deck. I had built this version a bit ago, and today was a mess and I didn’t have time to update it for more recent meta and went to battle with a slightly out-of-date version. Here’s the list:

@Smi77y’s Mono Black Infect

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Creatures (16) 4 Plague Stinger 3 Spellskite 4 Phyrexian Crusader 3 Whispering Specter 2 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon Planeswalkers (2) 2 Liliana of the Veil Spells (16) 3 Virulent Wound 1 Go for the Throat 3 Trigon of Rage 3 Victim of Night 4 Lashwrithe 2 Tezzeret’s Gambit Land (26) 4 Inkmoth Nexus 22 Swamp Sideboard (15) 4 Despise 1 Virulent Wound 3 Surgical Extraction 3 Black Sun’s Zenith 1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon 2 Postmortem Lunge 1 Wring Flesh

4 rounds, cut to top 8, with only top 4 earning prizes.

Round 1: Warren, playing UB control
He was playing the build with Reassembling Skeleton and Sword of Feast and Famine. I lost the roll, got the zero-land opener and mulled to six, and kept a slightly suspect hand…. and drew very little action. All three Wounds, multiple Spellskites, and a great deal of land. Not enough pressure to threaten him, and while I eventually got him up to nine poison counters by hitting a Snapcaster with multiple Wounds, I could not bring it home and he milled me out with Jace. Game 2 wasn’t much better. I again started with a no-lander and mulled into a slow hand, which was assisted by him Leaking an early Stinger and then Extracting it. I did manage a Skittles to kill his active Jace, but he killed it with BSZ. I did get it back for one shot with Postmortem Lunge, but that was all I got through and again got milled out, this time by Drownyards.
0-1 matches, 0-2 games

Round 2: Parker playing WW
He won the roll, I mulled another zero-lander and kept a hand with a Stinger and a Crusader, a couple Swamps, and I don’t remember what else. He opened with turn 1 Champion of the Parish, turn 2 Elite Inquisitor, turn 3 Doomed Traveler and Elite Vanguard, turn 4 Honor of the Pure. I had to chump off my Stinger and hold back the Crusader, but it was just too much damage too fast. I boarded in all the Despises, Zeniths, and the Wring Flesh. I kept a one-lander because I had three Despises and a Crusader in it. I tore apart his hand full of creatures, eventually drew land, dropped the Cruader, and won in five turns. Game 3 was just a race, and I won it on the back of two Crusaders.
1-1 matches, 3-3 games

Round 3: Festus, playing UR Tempo
I just want to say that I absolutely love this UR deck. I loved playing CounterHammer and CounterPhoenix back in the day, and this deck reminds me of that. If I had all the cards and had time to put it together, this deck (or something like it) is what I would have played. I’ll probably play it next week. Anyway, game 1 I opened with a one-lander… an Inkmoth Nexus. So, after mulling to six and keeping a sketchy hand, he opened with a Delver and flipped it turn 2, and of course my next draw was a Wound. Grr. Anyway, he drew burn when he needed it, and bounce for my (relatively late) Crusader, and that was it. Game 2 was all about my turn 2 Spellskite. I used it to protect my guys, got a Trigon through, and managed to get there. It was close, though, as I took a lot of damage redirecting things to the Spellskite. Game 3 I got a Stinger with a Lashwrithe on it and managed to get a Skittles out, though he Vapor Snagged it. He just didn’t have the counters, though, and I managed to get through for the win.
2-1 matches, 5-4 games

Round 4: Chris, playing mono-Blue Grand Architect
I was the lowest-ranked of the 2-1s so I couldn’t draw in. Chris was 2-0-1 so he still had a shot even if he lost, so we shuffled up. Game 1 I had a good draw with a Stinger, a Crusader, and a Trigon, and that got me there. Game 2 I had a slightly slower draw and no removal, and that became a problem because he got two Vedalken Certarchs and an Architect. I had two Stingers out and even had a Lashwrithe on one, but he cast a Pentavus (!) and made some Pentavites to chump, and I could not get through, His swingback was lethal, so on to game 3. I got turn 2 Stinger, turn 3 Crusader, turn 4 fourth Swamp, Lashwrithe on the Stinger. He did have an Architect, though, and managed to get a Treasure Mage to fetch a Steel Hellkite and cast that off the Architect, but I had Wound so that I didn’t need to trade. He got another Treasure Mage into a Thopter Assembly and for that one I did trade my Stinger, but I followed with Skittles for the win.
3-1 matches, 7-5 games

Quarterfinals: Jacob, playing UG
Interesting deck, pretty much all dudes, and some strange ones: Civilized Scholar, Kessing Cagebreaker, Splinterfright, Jace’s Archivist, Boneyard Wurm, ramp guys. However, pretty much no removal. He won the roll and flipped a Scholar early, but I came back with a Crusader and had a Trigon out. He got a 5/5 Splinterfright out, but had to leave it back to block, and I was able to keep him on the defensive and got there without too much difficulty. Game 2 was all about me with guys in the air, including a Skittles on turn 5. Match was over very quickly, and I had a long wait for my semifinals opponent to finish up.
4-1 matches, 9-5 games

Semifinals: Fernando, playing GW Kessing
Game 1 I had an early Stinger and a Crusader a bit after, and a Trigon at some point. My play of the game was a Tezzeret’s Gambit with him at a few poison counters, me proliferating on a Trigon and Liliana. Anyway, he ramped a little but didn’t get a Titan, but did manage a White Sun’s Zenith for four, and the tokens took out Liliana. However, they didn’t help against the Crusder, but he got a Garruk, Primal Hunter to make a token for the Crusader. I had a Spellskite out as well, and the Stinger was getting through with pump; his one Inkmoth died to a Wound and I carried it. Game 2 I got turn 2 Stinger, turn 3 Specter, turn 4 Trigon, swing for five poison counters and destroy his hand. Followed with Skittles and that was it.
5-1 matches, 11-5 games

The other semi was the RDW mirror, which was over in about 10 minutes. By the time Fernando and I finished, it was about 12:15, and Brandon (the other finalist) and I were both ready to pack it in, so we decided to split. RDW seems manageable with 3 main board Skites and the Crusaders, but I haven’t played it so I’m not sure. (Shrine does seem like an awfully good answer for Crusader.) Anyway, I turned my winnings into almost all the cards I need for UR Tempo for next week, as well as a pack for each one of my boys, so it was a good night.

Thoughts on the deck:
• The deck seems completely solid with no really bad matchups. UB seems like the toughest, and there I felt like if I hadn’t drawn so much land, I could have won that one. It’s funny because I’m not a huge fan of Scars block, but of course this deck runs only two cards from Innistrad, a set I like much better—a little irony there.
• Trigon of Rage is amazing. If you play this deck, play Trigon in it. 3 seemed like the perfect number.
• Spellskite was also amazing. @Smi77y, why did you cut these from the most recent version?
• I wasn’t all that impressed with Whispering Specter and sided them out every match except for my first and last match. I might consider relegating these to the sideboard if I play this again.
• Tezzeret’s Gambit was a really mixed card. It was really good a couple times, and really awful some others. Not sure if I’d keep it main in the future.
• Victim of Night was excellent. Kills everything, or at least everything that anybody plays.
• Virulent Wound is also outstanding. So many targets in Standard right now!
• Lashwrithe seems awesome in principle, but in practice it’s sometimes a little slow. Absolutely terrible against permission and any deck running Slime. Honestly I liked Trigon better, and would consider cutting down to three Lashwrithes main.
• Really wanted Nihil Spellbomb. Should definitely board that next time.

I would also note that I playtested this exactly zero times. The first time I ever even shuffled it was the first game of round 1. It’s not the hardest deck to play, either, so a solid deck that easy to pick up, and not that expensive. A very solid call for FNM or maybe even something bigger…

Here’s the list I played:

Mill Blade

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Ceatures (9) 4 Hedron Crab 4 Squadron Hawk 1 Sun Titan Spells (27) 4 Ponder 4 Visions of Beyond 2 Into the Roil 3 Mana Leak 1 Trapmaker’s Snare 2 Sword of Body and Mind 2 Timely Reinforcements 2 Day of Judgment 4 Archive Trap 3 Jace, Memory Adept Land (24) 4 Arid Mesa 6 Island 4 Misty Rainforest 5 Plains 4 Scalding Tarn 1 Terramorphic Expanse Sideboard (15) 2 Condemn 1 Day of Judgment 2 Dismember 3 Surgical Extraction 2 Timely Reinforcements 2 Oblivion Ring 2 Celestial Purge 1 Dispel

Seemed like it would be a good time.

Round 1: Brandon, playing RDW
The are real differences in RDW builds and RDW players. Brandon brings legit RDW decks and knows how to play them. And, unfortunately, I was never really in these games. Bad draws, but not sure I would have won with good ones. Mostly what milling him did was fuel his Lavamancers and put Phoenixes in his graveyard. Got steamrolled.
0-1 matches, 0-2 games

Round 3, Amy playing Random GB ramp
Game 1 was going along smoothly, early Crab, Trapped off her Cultivate, etc. However, second Trap hit… Kozilek. Really? I just scooped a couple turns later since that’s pretty much game unless I can get a Sworded Hawk, and I didn’t. Game 2 I sided in the Extractions and kept a hand that had one. I then drew both the others and when I extracted her Kozilek, I found that she had nothing else worth extracting and died with some dead cards in hand. This was dumb and displays a critical weakness of mill: Eldrazi hose you.
0-2 matches, 0-4 games

Round 3, Matt playing Pyromancer’s Ascension
Seems like a bad matchup, me actually trying to put stuff in his graveyard. My T1 Crab ate a Bolt, but I had one turn 2 and had fetches. He got an Ascension active but I had multiple traps (including Snaring into a Trap on his end after he had cracked a fetch) and got Jace out and that got me there. Game 2 he sided in Exarch Twin. I sided in the Extractions and extracted the Twins early. He never got a PA active but drew tons of burn. He almost managed to burn me out but I managed to double-Visions my way into six land, which allowed me to thereafter draw gas and I got the last Trap I needed for the win. This match reveals the other down side of mill: people are so demoralized after losing to you that they drop, which destroys your breakers.
1-2 matches, 2-4 games

Round 4, Marvin playing mono Black infect
Game 1 I had an early Crab that he Dismembered, then a Hawk and another Crab. Timely Reinforcements wasn’t very good here. I chumped off a couple Plague Stingers with Hawks, and then he dropped a Crusader. I still had a Crab and didn’t want to have to use it to block, but I topdecked a Sword, equipped a Hawk, and then had Wolf token to block. He scooped as another hit from the Sword would end it. Game 2 I kept an opener with two sources of blue but no White and I paid the price. Got stuck on three Islands and never really recovered. I did Dismember a Crusader at one point in this game but it just wan’t enough. Game 3 I got a bunch of cards milled with a Crab before he killed it, and got Jace on turn 5. He didn’t swing into Jace instead swinging at me, but I had two Traps in hand and was able to mill him out for the win the turn before I would have died.
2-2 matches, 4-5 games

Round 5: David, playing RDW
Game 1 I got the god draw and had two Crabs in the opener and a fistful of fetches. I milled off 36 cards over the next three turns before he burnt off both of the Crabs and then refilled my hand with a Visions and got there. I was assisted in that he had three Shrines out but was stuck on two land for a long time, which gave me time to finish him. Game 2 he again got an early Shrine but had the O Ring for it. I had Timely Reinforcements to get me from 16 life back to 20, but it just didn’t matter as I didn’t draw enough other mill cards. Game 3 came down to the wire. I had him down to a few cards in his library, but he had killed my Jace and we were both in topdeck mode. I drew a Sword but had nothing to put it on, land, and then land, and then he drew Hero. I drew another Sword and played it. He drew Guide and hit me down to 3, then Burst me down to 1. I drew Visions, then ancestralled into Timely Reinforcements. Yes! I went back to 7, cracked a fetch down to 6 so I could equip both Swords to the tokens so I could block. He only had 2 cards left in his library and so that did it. Hooray, Visions!
3-2 matches, 6-6 games

And, of course, I missed the top 8 on tiebreakers, which were horrific. My round 2 opponent didn’t do well and my round 3 opponent rage quit… err, dropped, so I really had no shot of making it on breakers. That’s a bummer, because I think I would have had a shot in the top 8.

The deck is a blast to play, as nobody was expecting mill. Visions of Beyond was definitely the MVP card in this deck—turns out that Ancestral Recall is pretty amazing. It’s really unfortunate that so much of this deck is rotating out, as this deck would be even better in an environment with no Eldrazi.

Oh, well. One more FNM to go before rotation (for me, that is). Might go back to Caw Blade, might replay Twin Pod, which was great. We’ll see.