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So many things happened this weekend. I'm writing this because it means I can procrasitnate an essay on Clifford v Clark v Kitchar; I'm not a fan of philosophy.

 

I scrubbed in Lincoln this weekend with Counterbalance. The moment I started seeing people pour into the venue, I knew I wasn't doing very well. Goblins and Dredge were the most popular decks, which didn't bode well for me. To top it off, I felt sick, but that isn't an excuse, as friend Matt Hansen missed an entire week of school before the PTQ Lincoln for Yokohama last year, and he easily won that event. My play was absolutely abysmal. I couldn't get reads on either of my opponents, and my draws were unimpressive. Apparently Chrome Mox is desperately in love with me, because I always see multiples off of Top whenever I sack a fetchland. I'm probably going back to Gifts Rock, because the level of skill required to pilot the deck to a plane ticket is, in my opinion, only possessed by a dozen or so people alive. Tom LaPille is just a sack. (jk Tom)

In other news, Finkel won the Pro Tour. I can't say I'm nearly as happy as Bill Stark (who idolizes Finkel like crazy), but this is still ridiculously awesome. He played tight and drafted an impressive kithkin deck in the top eight, moving out of merfolk fluidly and easily reading that Wizened Cenn for what it was. I am actually giddy with happiness; Finkel is probably my biggest inspiration to play the game, and my limited strategies have always been based on his: cards that draw cards are better than pretty much anything not a bomb. Distant Melody is my favorite limited card out of Morningtide, and now others are starting to see why, because it was one of the most common cards in Jon's decks on the weekend.

 

Another thing that I noticed from the Pro Tour is the following:

 

 

Kenji, Shuhei, Shingo, Takuya... Where'd you guys go?

 

I'm on the fence about the new video coverage. Bill is pretty into it at times but said some things during Herzog's match that I thought made him look pretty stupid; overall, I think he would be a fine permanent fixture on the commentating team with more experience. Rich Hagon, on the other hand, is a different story. The guy is a super geek, which drives me up the wall. Everything legitimate about this game being close to a competitive sport goes out the window whenever I hear Hagon speak. He just says so many thinks that sound completely idiotic. Seriously, get him out of there. Immediately.

 

Iowans Brandon Scheel and Steve Locke put up 11th place and 30th place, respectively. Scheel 3-0'd his first draft, bashing Kenji round 2 with such hits as Elvish Eulogist (lol?). Steve top 32'd his very first Pro Tour, ending day one with a 6-1 record. Both are now qualified for Hollywood, so keep a lookout for them in the near future. As a bonus, Scheel, Matt Hansen, and Zac Hill were featured in the latest "Play the game, See the World" video for WotC, which is also pretty awesome (because monkeys are the nuts). Go check it out.

 

Lastly, I think that everyone who is getting out of magic now is going to regret it later. I sincerely hope that the MTG Players Union made progress at the players meeting, and that we are going to see a lot positive changes happening in the near future. Don't sell your collection just yet. I think we're gonna be all right.

Lately, despite all the focus I’ve been putting on Extended, all I can think about is Standard, and more importantly, how I’ve been doing. I’ve now won the last three Standard events I’ve played in, which includes two FNMs and a City Champs. My success can be attributed to a single deck which I’ve found to be completely dominant in my local metagame.

 

Which deck is that, you ask?

 

Snow White.

 

Now, before I lose all of you, hear me out. I’m not talking about Turbo Fog, which, in my opinion, is an absolute abomination to Magic: The Gathering. I’m talking about a Scrying Sheets engine white control deck with removal and dragons. For reference, here is the list that Stephen Nagy piloted to a 2^nd place finish at Pennsylvania States last year:

 

4 Martyr of Sands
3 Purity
2 Aeon Chronicler
2 Crovax, Ascendant Hero

1 Sacred Mesa
4 Condemn
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Wrath of God
2 Austere Command
3 Story Circle
3 Foresee
4 Coldsteel Heart

4 Scrying Sheets
4 Boreal Shelf
2 Mouth of Ronom
13 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Urza's Factory

 

Sideboard:

 

3 Take Possession
3 Disenchant
2 Sacred Mesa
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
2 Crib Swap
2 Triskelavus
1 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins

 

If you find that this list looks vaguely familiar, then you’ve probably read the article about this deck written by Ben Peebles-Mundy. He’s friends with Nagy, and both played a near copy of the same deck. Ben went X-2 if memory serves correct, so the deck did pretty well at that event.

 

Their idea when building the deck was that the vast majority of the field would be playing elves, or some other kind of beatdown strategy. Remember, SCG had a 1K Open right before states, and an Elves deck won that event, which sent the general populous into an uproar about how good it would be for Champs. This deck was placed in a niche metagame, where it’s bad matchups are few and far between. Because those bad matchups were nowhere to be found, the deck excelled.

 

A couple of weeks ago, I was free on a Saturday to go play in my first City Champs since 2007. I knew I wanted to win and get a spot in my local store’s top eight, but I also knew that the metagame was full of all sorts of different decks rather than just separated into beatdown or control. I had put together RG Snow the night before, and had planned on playing it. Well, right before I left my house, I was brooding over Faeries.

 

[aside]

 

Let me tell you. I hate Faeries. Actually, to be honest, most people who know me would probably be surprised to hear that I don’t like the archetype, because I’m that guy who plays Mono Blue, Dralnu, Pickles, etc, so a good deck with lots of counterspells should be right up my alley, right? Wrong. I just think the deck has too many small weaknesses that get bottomed out because it plays so many good cards together in the same deck.

 

“But that’s exactly why it’s a good deck!” you say. I never said it wasn’t good. It just doesn’t appeal to me. At the very core of it’s strategy, you’re just bashing with men. And to me that strategy seems lame, unless you have a one-sided stasis going on.

 

[/aside]

 

Back to my story, I’m thinking about how rampant Faeries is in my local area. I kept coming back to answers like Pyroclasm and Sulfurous Blast, which are pretty marginal in the grand scheme of things because Faeries can always finish with Mistbind Clique and Conclave. They plan to 1 for 1 or better (Spellstutter Sprite and Scion of Oona), and so they actually don’t need to generate any card draw on their own. This problem was really frustrating me, and I didn’t like the fact that each deck I played ended up losing utterly to Faeries.

 

Then, right before I left for the City Champs, I had a eureka moment that I’m sure was realized by others. Crovax! The Ascendant Hero is a 4/4 Engineered Plague! So, I immediately got onto deckcheck.net (which is the stoneblade) and put in a search for all Lorwyn Standard decks that played Crovax, and came across Steve Nagy’s runner up list. That’s when I remembered Peebles’ article, and printed it. I built the deck at the store, getting the last cards that I needed five minutes before the starting time:

 

4 Martyr of Sands
2 Purity
2 Aeon Chronicler
2 Crovax, Ascendant Hero

1 Adarkar Valkyrie

1 Sacred Mesa
4 Condemn
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Wrath of God
2 Austere Command
3 Story Circle
3 Foresee
4 Coldsteel Heart

4 Scrying Sheets
4 Boreal Shelf
2 Mouth of Ronom
13 Snow-Covered Plains
1 Urza's Factory

 

Sideboard:

 

4 Take Possession
4 Rule of Law

2 Sacred Mesa
2 Triskelavus
1 Crovax, Ascendant Hero
1 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins

 

The main change was making disenchants into Rule of Law. Dragonstorm still has inevitability here even if I get active with Story Circle because I have to prevent each copy of a superpowered Grapeshot. All they have to do is get a storm count of like 8 and multiple Swaths, and I can lose. For that reason, I bring in rule of law, which means that they have basically no way to win unless I draw no spells.

 

The purpose of the trikes, ruins and twest, take possession sideboard is that control decks have some problems with all of these cards. Takes were really awesome against the UR Teferi Control deck I played in round 2, because I just stole his Chandra and used it on his dude.

 

I won the City Champs without losing a match. I beat Faeries 2-1, which was still a hard matchup, but my opponent was forced to counter a wrath of got I baited with because his board was Scion, Prowler, Prowler. I cashed in a martyr for 18 and followed up with a Crovax after running him out of counter, and he conceded with me at 3 when he had no more cryptic commands and 0 creatures which would survive Crovax. (Technically, he could have won if he’d flash in a Mistbind Clique eot and then cast another won, championing the first with it’s champ trigger still on the stack, but I had two condemns).

 

I beat the Teferi deck with the transformational sideboard and then drew into the top 4, where I played the dream matchup, RG aggro. I split the finals with the same Faerie deck from round 1 but technically won the tournament due to tiebreakers.

 

The very next week (Lorwyn legal), I won FNM with the exact same 75, playing against a bunch of really good matchups (Elves, Mono Black Rogues, and another Faeries deck), but I drew with one pickles deck and lost to another. I played against the same Faeries deck in the top eight, and then RG aggro in the top four, splitting the finals again.* Crovax was once again an all-star, especially against my Mono Black rogues opponent, who Extirpated Oblivion Ring against me to make his Bitterblossoms irremovable. Unfortunately for him, he didn’t know about Crovax, so he died to a combination of 4/4 beats and lifeloss.

 

Just this past Friday, I ran the same 75 once again, 4-1’ing the Swiss, and lost 0 games in the top eight. My Swiss loss was to Pickles, which I’ve completely ignored because I’ve won 1 game against it in 3 matches, and have no idea what angle to use to beat it, so I gave it up. The matchup really feels like a lost cause. Other than that, I felt like there was really no matchup that was out of reach. I was able to get Crovax down against my Faeries opponent in game three and resolved Sacred Mesa in game two, which prompted a scoop. I also played against Goblins and Mono Black Rogues in the Swiss.

 

My round one opponent was my quarterfinals opponent, and for having some 5 or 6 non-creature cards in his deck, I was actually really worried. He was Gwb treefolk, splashing off of Murmuring Bosk for only Doran. The problem with the matchup was that he’d get one of his 5/5 Champions from Morningtide with Harbinger and then Champion it, so he’d always be able to get another one when I Wrathed, and it made Condemn really terrible. Couple that with Heartwood Storyteller, and there were a few points where I was really in trouble. He also had Timber Protectors, and even got dubs on the table against me. I ended up dealing with it by blocking one and condemning the other before damage, but that was basically my only out, as my O-Rings were either at the bottom of my library or occupying the board on Lignifies. Story Circle was awesome here, but I didn’t lean on it at all because I knew that he had Rootgrapple, and he could just sit back and wait to draw a Harbinger and then all of a sudden I have to scramble to defend myself from an onslaught of massive beaters.

 

This deck is pretty much the best deck in the format. If lots of people are playing the Reveillark deck or Pickles, this probably is not the deck to play. However, I was really happy to see that Warrior deck in the GPT top eight, because it’s another really good matchup. The Axe still makes it a battle because all of their creatures are potentially giant solifuges. Luckily, we have O-Ring for that.

 

I’m currently 15-2-2 over the course of those 3 events, if anyone is curious. The only Morningtide card I’ve tried was Fuedkiller’s Verdict in a few casual games against friends, and it was pretty mediocre. I doubt if I’ll put it back in. Reveillark has also been suggested to me, which actually seems pretty awful, since it only gets back 4 creatures in the entire deck, and that’s late game when most of my white spells have been spent.

 

As always, post any questions or comments you might have.

 

* We split the finals of FNM because the prize support for first and second is the exact same, so there is really no reason to play.

So this is gonna be a quick one, but today I found out about the first legitimate deck to break Reveillark. The deck is UW and combos to machine gun every permanent the opponent controls to his or her hand or draw a desired portion of the combo player's library.

For reference, here is the list I've been goldfishing. It's the Japanese list that got 2nd at the Grand Prix Trial for Shizuoka:

3 Bonded Fetch
4 Mirror Entity
4 Mulldrifter
4 Reveillark
3 Body Double
4 Riftwing Cloudskate

3 Condemn
3 Momentary Blink
4 Wrath of God
1 Mindstone
4 Prismatic Lens

4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Wanderwine Hub
3 Faerie Conclave
2 Calciform Pools
1 Urza's Factory
5 Islands
4 Plains

SB

3 Teferi's Moat
2 Sower of Temptation
4 Flashfreeze
2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
1 Mystical Teachings
1 Stoncloaker
2 Draining Whelk

In order to combo off, you 'only' need Reveillark, Entity, Body Double, and whichever card you are hoping to abuse (Mulldrifter/Bonded Fetch or Riftwing Cloudskate). Since I haven't seen it anywhere on here, I'll explain the activation of effects that have to take place.

First, You need to have Reveillark in play, along with Mirror Entity. You need a Body Double in the graveyard or in play, and it doesn't matter if it's copying something. You also need your abusable piece either in the graveyard or in play.

Second, activate Mirror Entity for 'X equals zero'. Indicate that you are going to keep priority, and then activate it again. Do this as many times as necessary without passing (around 50 is fine, if you're worried about drawing your deck with mulldrifter, don't worry, it's an "up to 2" effect on Rev, and you can always stop drawing by returning just Entity and Body Double repeatedly). Same for Cloudskate.

What happens now is that the Reveillark and Entity will die, and you can start looping Body Double and, say Mulldrifter. All of those effects will happen on top of each Mirror Entity activation, so it continues until the stack is empty of entity activations. Drawing your deck and rocking one-sided Upheavals are usually enough for a concession. If you already have a Riftwing, drawing your deck is irrelevant. The whole point of drawing a ton of cards is to get the riftwing. Once that happens, the game is basically over.

The combo seems very susceptible to graveyard hate and bounce. For the bounce, the deck has Momentary Blink, which keeps the combo going unhindered. Graveyard hate is something I'm working on trying to address. Tormod's Crypt and Extirpate are pretty annoying, and even Offalsnout can eff up the deck's plans.

I really like the sideboard because it just transforms into a control deck if the combo becomes disruptable. Note that with Sower of Temptation, you can actually Wrath your opponent's side of the board with the combo because Entity makes the guy you burgled into a 0/0 as well.


I'm out for now. I plan on rocking this deck at FNM before the PTQ this weekend, so I'll hopefully have some results up on Sunday. If you have a question you want answered or have recommendations for improving the deck, I check me email more often than this site, so hit me up at thirdplace33-at-gmail-dot-com.

I write this after getting home Sunday evening. The blog site is currently down, so this might be showing up a little later than I had hoped.

After writing the initial primer for Gifts Rock, I realized a key problem with what I was doing: I’m pushing my pet deck as the best deck without having thoroughly ran it against the metagame. Therefore, I decided to not write anymore up on the topic until I had played it in a PTQ and could gauge its strengths against a field.

So of course, now we get to the ever clichéd tournament reports. Due to my complete and utter awesomeness, I arrive in Ames, IA from my hometown of Vinton only ten minutes behind schedule, as our car was planning to leave at noon.

Ames is the Mecca of Midwestern Magic, and has produced two of the most incredible PTQ players in the region: Brandon Scheel and Matt Hansen. Since PT Los Angeles back at the end of 2005, the two have not missed a single Pro Tour save Geneva. Both are Q’d for Kuala Lumpur, and both have more PTQ top eights than you can count on your fingers and toes combined. Along with them is the master of disaster, “Lucky” Steve Locke, who was at one time infamous for opening Steam Vents in every limited event he played in. In the past year, Steve has put up numerous top eights in PTQs, but never made it pass the finals until last season, when he broke through and earned himself a slot to KL with the first qualifier he participated in that season. Rounding out the crew is Peter Martinez, the Caucasian Hispanic who can make anyone laugh and regales the car with his sordid intentions involving whichever beautiful actress we are currently discussing.

My barndom knows no bounds.

Yours truly is the only one on this trip without a PTQ top eight; and while this bothered me a little, I felt like they expected little of me, which makes me feel the need to prove myself. I qualified for Nationals in 2005 with that similar feeling, and I kind of felt it as we got ready to go.

Unfortunately, Matt (who will henceforth be known as Cheeks), Steve, and I were the ones prepared to leave. Peter and Scheel were still sleeping off the previous night’s debauchery. WoW and beer are a dangerous combination. Scheel apparently had no idea he was the driver when we woke him at one o’clock, but begrudgingly bit the bullet and came through.

We all crammed into his car and took off for Fargo around 3pm. The eight hour drive was spent discussing girls, playing music and movie games, and bobbing in and out of consciousness. We arrive in Fargo around 11:30pm. Our hotel STB’d and we got a one-bed room, and I already volunteered to take the floor. I ended up in a recliner, cheeks on the floor, and the rest made a Steve sandwich. We watched Road Trip and fell asleep quickly.

My phone went off at 7:45, and I used all the self control I could muster not to throw it. We dressed, ate, and got to the tournament site in a rather timely fashion. I, being the master that I am, brought deck reg sheets with me so we had our lists filled out the night before. Here is what I played:

Gifts Rock

4 Sakura Tribe Elder
3 Loxodon Hierarch
3 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis
1 Ravenous Baloth

4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Gifts Ungiven
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Living Wish
1 Vindicate
1 Profane Command
1 Primal Command
1 Damnation
1 Putrefy
1 Collective Restraint
2 Thoughtseize
2 Duress
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Smother

4 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
1 Golgari Rot Farm
2 Forest
2 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Plains
1 Island


SB


1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Eternal Witness
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Meloku
1 Shriekmaw
1 Krosan Grip
1 Cabal Therapy
1 Thoughtseize
1 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Extirpate

I’d done very little actual testing, other than running it against other archetypes on two copies of apprentice and a few MWS games. However, I felt comfortable with the deck because I liked it and because I had past experience with it. I felt that the Counterbalance matchup was good enough that I could justify playing the deck, despite the doran matchup being rather swingy.

Scheel and Peter were bringing Dredge, Steve is the Gerrybalance master, and Cheeks had built a UW Tron deck that he really liked that ran Trinket Mage and FoF insead of the usual Gifts package.

The problem we ran into when we got to the site was that there was no dealer. This is something new to me, as one of my mentors in the game makes his living as a dealer, so I had never experienced an event without one. I had my deck all assembled, but Scheel was missing a few key cards (Cephalid Coliseum, for instance), and it seemed that there were quite a few others who didn’t have their decks finished.

All was not lost; Scheel found someone to lend him cards, and everyone was in business. The event was run by Steve Port, whose name is legend in the Midwest. I just want to take this opportunity to say that Steve is the greatest Tournament organizer I have ever experienced. He gets rounds going almost immediately, and runs the tournament so smoothly, I am always shocked when I look at the time. The PTQ was over by 8:30. That’s pretty unreal impressive, even for seven rounds.

Anyway, 113 people, I think. Time to… How did Feldman put it? Play underpowered interactions in a format full of unfairness?

Round 1 – Goblin King Sam Black

I’ve seen Sam at several events, but this is the first time I’ve ever spoken to him. I knew he was a master long before he won the TSP Block Championship at GenCon or the Car Tournament at Worlds, so it was kind of exhilarating to get to player a better player early on. He’s rocking the Extended version of Goblins, only it has the same theme as his Car Tournament winning decklist did: Boggart Shenanigans. I play Collective Restraint because it’s insane in this matchup, which is unfavorable; with his enchantment, he isn’t cold to mine. I knew that I would have to have some overwhelming draws in order to beat him.

Game one was rather anticlimactic (actually the whole match was, but Goblins isn’t known for subtlety). I accelerate early on, but that’s as far as the game progresses. He gets down 4 Goblins and plays Goblin Pyromancer on turn 4, swinging for lethal and me sitting there scratching my head. That’s nice.

Game two is more frustrating still. I resolve Collective Restraint and then start using Primal Command to loop Witnesses and result in genesis, but I never get there. His board is 4 or 5 goblins, one being warchief and one Prospector, and he has a Shenanigans in play. I’m at 16. He does some math, and then plays a ringleader for 2R with a mountain up. He reveals… 4 mountains! Ding! He shakes his head, puts them on the bottom, and then runs out a second ringleader, sacking two goblins for Pros mana, and hits three goblins on top. He then cycles through every goblin in his hand to deal me exactly the remainder of my lifetotal without needing to enter combat. I extend the hand, grinning in spite of myself, and am still laughing at the absurdity of the deck’s function. Sam ended up getting knocked out of contention by Doran, which apparently is a terrible matchup.

I am 0-1 and don’t feel terrible; that’s probably a good sign. If I’m at a PTQ and 0-1, I want to drop, cut myself, and go home and weep and complain about rough beats. This time, I was telling people how awesome Sam’s deck was. I watch Peter play against a Counterbalance guy who was actually douchebagging his way through the game, trying to get Peter for every technical misplay possible. Apparently, in game one Peter had been making some poor technical plays and his opponent was trying to milk it. By the end, this dude looked like an idiot, because he was doing things like calling the judge over for Pete forgetting to get a bridge token after sacrificing a token to Cabal Therapy. Peter pulled it out in three, and it was good to see him beat the ‘bad guy.’

Round 2 – Dredge

This guy seemed nice enough; we talked a bit about where each was from as we shuffled up. He flashed me a few cards accidentally as the game began, but I wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. I Thoughtseized away a breakthough, but he had a second in hand. He started the dredging process and it became a creature fight. I would sack elders to get his bridges RFG’d and he went for Akroma. I ran out Collective Restraint and there was little he could do to win after that.

Game two was more of the same, only I had living wish for Jailer, which shut him down. The key play in this game was actually a misplay; I blind therapy’d for Putrid Imp and hit dubs. The correct play was to Therapy for Careful Study, which is their awesome card, but ‘better lucky than good’ etc, etc.

Whew. Soooo glad I didn’t take an eight hour ride to 0-2. That would have been depressing.

Round 3 – Doran

I hate this deck. People keep calling it their ‘safe deck’ but that doesn’t make sense to me at all considering a competent Counterbalance player will tear Doran to bits.

Game one I go all the way to 15 life on turn one in exchange for binning his confidant. I’ll make that trade any day of the week. His draws are superb, however, and my marginal one is inadequate by comparison. I concede in hope that I can win the next two as swiftly as possible.

Game two is even more frustrating, and I continue to backpedal and cannot find an edge in the matchup. I incorrectly cast Gifts, and pay for it. Genesis-Witness recursion is amazing here, but I didn’t have the sufficient testing to know that. I end up peeling a Living Wish off the top the turn before I die, wish for Meloku, and kill him two turns later on a 13 point air strike.

I still haven’t figured out a game plan for the final game, and he gets out of profane command range with multiple hierarchs on the board. I get down Collective Restraint, which prevents him from applying too much pressure, and we can’t finish each other in extra turns. I make a huge misplay of not playing to win; instead I take the role of playing to not lose. The turning point of game 3 was me being able to witness back a living wish and go get something from my sideboard. I had acess to nine mana, which meant that if I got meloku I'd be open to Cabal Therapy, which he'd been sandbagging as a sub-strategy all match. Instead I wish for and cast Hierarch. He didn't have the Therapy, and said that if I'd gone for Meloku I would have probably won the match.

1-1-1

I’m not sure if I’m out of contention at this point. I don’t care; I decide to keep playing regardless.

Round 4 – Rith’s Charm

This deck is a joke. The guy piloting it was nice enough, but I finished him in less than 15 minutes. The Cabal Therapy/Thoughtseize/Duress/Witness Gifts pile was pretty unreal, stripping him of everything in both games. He had something under a heights that I was pretty worried about at first, but then, based on the way he was playing, I suspected it was an irrelevant card. It turned out to be a Forest, as he showed me at the end of game one. Game two he got kind of mana screwed, but held me at bay by having two martyrs gain him 30 life right away. I just smashed away at his lifetotal bit by bit with multiple 4/4s on the board.

2-1-1

Yay, a winning record.

Round 5 – Izzetron

Great, this is it. Tron is so terrible for me. I’d seen this kid playing it earlier though, so I knew what to expect from his deck. To be honest, I actually looked almost exactly like Osyp’s Honolulu Standard list; I can’t remember if there were Wildfires in that or not, but this kid had them.

Game one is pretty vicious; I Duress a Thirst for Knowledge but see he has two demonfires and full tron. He points an 8 point DF at my dome. I use the discard to get rid of his second copy of the X spell, and then somehow just start stomping him with Genesis beats.

Game two is pretty awkward. He mulls to five and I ‘Seize his Signet, and see 2 powerplants and an two keigas. He makes land drops to six and I vindicate the first keiga and damnation the second. It’s all pretty elementary from there, as he has no action.

3-1-1

After the games, he reveals that he didn’t own a lot if the staple tron cards like slaver and Sundering Titan. I’m glad for that.

Round 6– Counterbalance (Chapin’s Next Level Blue)

I know what he’s playing from scouting, and am pumped to be at table twelve, which hopefully meant I could have a chance.

Game one feels awful; I have no control and he overwhelms me with a goyf and the CB Top tag team.

Game two he apparently kept a 5 land hand and later told me so, but I played vindicate 3 times off witnesses and he scooped because he wasn’t finding action.

Game three was a repeat of game one.

3-2-1

Awesome. I’m obviously out now, but if I win one more match I get two draft sets instead of one, so I might as well play it out.

Round 7 - Next Level Blue

This is the most grueling match I’ve played in a long time. It’s very back and forth, and I don’t think he realizes that I’m sending out spells as scouts to find out what he has on top of his deck. It gives me the knowledge of when he has access to counterspell, and I try to make him waste them on irrelevant cards. Eventually the battle delves into a massive late game of permanents; I am recurring with genesis and use shriekmaw to kill a goyf.

Unfortunately, he has shackles to keep me from keeping my creatures. His deck is thin and he has two bobs in play, and has to start using academy ruins to keep bobs from inflicting damage. I finally go for Profane Command with him at one life on turn one of extra turns, and he has Counterspell number four. He untaps and takes an elaborate turn where he overwhelms the board with creatures; if I don’t kill him this turn he kills me on turn four. He then does something that got my heart racing; he living wishes for meddling mage and sets it to Profane Command.

Now, in most circumstances that would be game, except I had a billion mana at my disposal, and I had used Genesis to get back Shriekmaw the turn before. I untapped, paid to get witness, played witness, got the command, evoked the maw and killed his Mage, and fireballed him for three.

The punchline? This was game one.

We didn’t even play slowly. Each of our positions was even up until he threw up like ten creatures on the board on his second to last turn. He also used top quickly and never dwelt on it for more than 10 seconds, which couldn't be said of most players using the 1 drop top that day.

Anyway, that was the best game I played all day, and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. I brought my deck over to Brian Kowal, who wanted my list. Sam thought I needed Sensei’s Divining Top, so I might try those. We went out to eat with the Madison guys plus Nate Siftar. It was a good time, but I had no idea what to eat at the Vegetarian resturaunt we went to, so I scooped and just had soup.

Cheeks and Steve both made top eight; Steve lost to affinity in the quarters and cheeks lost to the same affinity in the semis.

I know this might sound like I’m content with how I did; I’m not. However, if I had put in more time to test, I think I would have won round three and been in a better position to top eight all-together.

Despite all of this, I’m not sure I will play Gifts Rock again this season. It’s a favorite of mine because I like casting Gifts and I think Gifts has always been best utilized in decks with green and black manas. I may explore the Gifts and Nail deck that’s been doing well on modo some time, but right now I’m loving the UW Tron deck and the Countebalance deck that Steve played. Who knows, though. If I end up not testing well with the other decks I want to explore, I'll go back to Gifts Rock.

See you all in Madison.

-third_place

This article is an in-depth walkthrough of the GBwu Gifts Rock Archetype. It is an attempt to break down a complicated archetype and analyze each piece of it's structure and how the deck functions as a whole.

As the title suggests, I'm going to be talking about Extended Gifts Rock.

For reference, my list:

4 Sakura Tribe Elder
3 Loxodon Hierarch
3 Eternal Witness
1 Genesis
1 Ravenous Baloth

4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Gifts Ungiven
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Living Wish
1 Vindicate
1 Profane Command
1 Primal Command
1 Damnation
1 Putrefy
1 Collective Restraint
1 Thoughtseize
2 Duress
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Smother

4 Windswept Heath
2 Polluted Delta
3 Overgrown Tomb
1 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
1 Breeding Pool
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Temple Garden
1 Golgari Rot Farm
2 Forest
1 Snow-Covered Forest
1 Swamp
1 Snow-Covered Swamp
1 Plains
1 Island

Sideboard

1 Indrik Stomphowler
1 Kataki, War’s Wage
1 Yixlid Jailer
1 Eternal Witness
1 Loxodon Hierarch
1 Meloku of the Clouded Mirror
1 Krosan Grip
1 Global Ruin
1 Thoughtseize
2 Duress
4 Leyline of the Void


Gifts Rock is not a 'new' archetype. It was played by the Dutch at PT LA and aptly named 'Dutch Gifts' but later became known as just Gifts Rock, due to the archetypal GB colors with a white splash, plus Gifts Ungiven. The central focus of the deck is generating forms of advantage, plus what I like to call 'grinding', or nickel and dime-ing the opponent to death through inevitability. A recent example of grind decks were the Time Spiral Block Constructed RelicTeachings decks that usually killed with Urza's Factory.

The grind in Gifts Rock is Genesis. Genesis offers amazing advantage at a 2G investment per turn while in the graveyard. It's really hard for Zoo decks to force through combat damage when we're getting back Hierarchs and Baloths every turn. Plus, with Eternal Witness, we start bringing back anything that's been binned, which is what makes Gifts so awesome in the deck. We can toss out a pile of Genesis/Witness/X/Y, and because of inevitability, we will eventually be able to use Witness to get those cards back. However, anyone with half a brain will realize this and give us the Genesis to put into our hand on occasions where one of X or Y doesn't matter or they have disruption/answer, which allows them to give us the better of two evils and put witness and the worse card in our yard. I'll go into more detail about Gifts targets in a minute.

The 'Skin'

Gifts Rock, being midrange control, needs control/containment attributes to keep the advantage until it's time to kill the opponent. Filling that role are the 4/4 creatures, and cards like Profane Command, Collective Restraint, Primal Command, Damnation, and Pernicious Deed, among others, which cover up or protect/restore our lifetotal. These are the ones that allow us to give our opponent card disadvantage by trading one of our cards for multiples of theirs.

*Aside*

Collective Restraint is a recent inclusion in the deck that I've tried after seeing it played online. It's considered 'virtual' card advantage, or an instance where we use one of our cards to make multiples of our opponents cards irrelevant. The most popular example for this is Moat, because it blanks an entire ground offensive, while not actually making a trade. Same deal with Restraint.

Additionally, I'm testing Primal Command because it was seen in the same deck, though I'm still not sure what to think of it at this point. I usually choose to tutor for Hierarch/Witness and gain 7 life; the card puts Gifts rock quite out of range of an aggressive assault, at least for a turn or two. Like I said, I'm not sure on it, so it may get cut for a different bullet.

*/Aside*

In addition to one-plus for ones, we have the trade answers like Vindicate, Smother, and Putrefy, which are flexible to a wide range of threats at efficient costs. Also note that the discard package is considered one-for-one; the problem with discard is that hidden information prevents us from knowing if we can hit the card we want to hit until we see their hand. This makes it a better play to sit back on Gifts or removal and wait for the opponent to make the mistake of playing into it. The discard package is there mainly to disrupt combo decks that want to finish the game as quickly as possible, or slow blue decks that sandbag specific cards that we want stripped.

Gifts Ungiven the 'Backbone'

Gifts itself belongs in it's own category, because it's the backbone of the deck. Without it, this deck clearly becomes a really, really bad Rock deck. When designing the deck, we are allowed to add multiple one-ofs like Vindicate because, when using Gifts, we grab four cards that are most impacting (advantageous for us to have from the opponent's perspective) and make the opponent ship us two. The best thing about this is that, like Fact or Fiction, our opponent is forced to make difficult choices, and therefore far more likely to make errors.

Now, to be honest, learning how to Gifts properly is an art. I've only ever learned to do it well with one deck: Type 2 Firemane Control, and that was with A LOT of practice. We have to just get into a stage of the game where we can identify each variable and use those identifications to put together the best four cards for that position. There are no set rules or guidelines to "Gifts-ing"; the vast majority of games, while playing out similarly for each matchup, have these specific variations that dictate how I will choose my cards. If my opponent is Zoo, my usual options range from Deed to Hierarch to Witness to Baloth to Genesis, and so it goes. If I know my opponent has Tribal Flames in hand, I obviously want to put myself out of range with Hierarch and company. If they have a squad of Kird Apes, Isamarus, and Tarmogoyfs, I'll get the Deed/Damnation/Restraint/Witness pile.

My favorite method of using Gifts is to force people to go on tilt. Several times I have cast Gifts for Pernicious Deed and others while holding another Deed in hand, knowing that my opponent isn't going to give me the card because of how badly it changes their position. I then proceed play it off that I peeled the second Deed off the top of my deck, and all of a sudden they think the gods have conspired against them or whatever, and now they're down a game because I am so unreal lucky. This did work for me at a PTQ, where my round three Affinity opponent just made terrible plays after I did this, and even kept playing after he was in no position to win which allowed me to see a bunch of his sideboard cards that I wouldn't have known about for game three if he'd been thinking clearly.


As an example of a pretty reliable Gifts, I will use my standard Gifts piles against Affinity, which is one of our best matchups. It's usually Damnation/Deed/Living Wish/Collective Restraint, because I get what I want no matter what they choose. More than likely, they bin card X along with Living Wish, because Kataki is a nightmare for them, and card X being the greatest of the other evils. This Gifts is a prime example of backing the opponent into a corner, where every card is potentially devastating for them.

The Affinity matchup plays out very simply. We either have 'it', or we don't, in which case we die. As we run into more complex matchups, the subtleties increase dramatically, and it becomes more difficult to use Gifts correctly. I thought I'd discuss Affinity because I think it is still underrepresented online and the deck is absolutely ridiculous fast, now clocking in turn four kills normally and turn three with a good draw. People know Affinity, and Grudge/Kataki/ Deed won't stop them from playing it all season.

Living Wish and the Sideboard

One of the best parts of playing this deck is that we run more than one toolbox. The Living Wish Sideboard plan is essentially designed to give us specific hate spells or answers to a key archetype. All of a sudden our worst matchup, Tron decks, are alright because we can sideboard Gaddock Teeg and have access to him in game 1. This amount of flexibility makes Gifts Rock a potent threat in the metagame, because we have answers to everything from Yixlid Jailer for Dredge to Indrik Stomphowler for Ideal.

The non-Wish sideboard is mostly more toolbox cards for specific matchups. Krosan Grip comes in against Counterbalance and Affinity, while Global Ruin is devastating against blue Tron decks. More discard so we don't pack it to combo, and finally, I prefer not to roll and die to dredge, so I play 4 Leyline and get some sleep at night.

 

If you've made it this far, you're probably wondering: So if this deck is so good, how come it's not the most popular deck? Answer:

The Manabase or 'Skeleton'

This deck is primarily green, with black as a strong support color. Blue and white are splashes for cards that don't have WW or UU in their casting cost. Even so, this is a problem. With a deck like this, despite the mana fixing in Search for Tomorrows and Elders, there are going to be mana problems. Due to these problems, the mana can be inconsistent, and can yield terrible draws were we have answers and threats, but not the colors of mana or enough mana to cast them. However, this is all contingent on how well a person can pilot the deck. Some people have a vague idea of what fetch should get what dual, while others completely understand the deck's need for certain color combinations at certain points. I usually want access to GGBWU by turn five at the latest.

 

In my opinion, any player with extensive Gifts experience should be playing
Gifts Rock. This past month, there were quite a lot of top eights
posted by one player, Trunks123, who is infamous on MTGO with the
archetype. The deck is probably one of the best if not the best deck in
the format, but it requires very tight play and always punishes the
pilot for their mistakes. As a counterpoint, it's a nightmare for counterbalance
decks, who have to worry about those 4+ casting cost spells that get
around it's namesake, and Pernicious Deed, which wipes the floor with
the blue enchantment. With Counterbalance being out in force on the internet, it could be the perfect time to break out Gifts for the PTQ season on the horizon (literally, the one I'm missing this weekend starts in 6 hours).

I'm going to try and get some testing in this weekend and will attempt to write up a matchup analysis. I wanted to go to the PTQ in St. Louis, but my potential travel buddies (WHO WILL GO UNNAMED THOUGH THEY DESERVE THE SHAME) and I couldn't work something out in time.

Later.

Bonus: My biggest mistake

I played with this deck in several PTQs last season, and I even made perhaps the most important play mistake of my competitive career with it, for if I had not misplayed this situation I doubt I would have lost. Also, top eight was on the line. Here it is:

My opponent is playing URW Trinket Angel; he has only a Sensei's Divining Top and a bunch of lands. My board position is even more lands than him, two Hierarchs, and a Putrefy, with mana up. I have just attacked him down to 5 life, and he spins his top EOT. He draws and plays Flooded Strand, spins the Top again, grimaces, and then breaks his Strand, most likely for an Island. He indeed gets an Island and shuffle effect, and then uses it to Top again. He looks at his top three, shows visible excitement, then draws with his top and plays Wrath and kills my 4/4 duo. I proceed to lose the match. Did you catch my error? It haunts me to this day, even a year later, because I realized it the moment he got his Island that I punted my first top eight and potential trip to Yokohama. It was even a play I had made twice in testing, which made it even more frustrating.

Here it is:

When my opponent Tops on his turn, he very openly projects his frustration. It's apparent that he has nothing on top of his library of consequence, which was obvious when he used the fetch to get a shuffle effect. However, the moment he cracked that Strand, I could have Putrefied his top in response, which would have forced him to draw one of his original three and shuffle away his Top. Which I don't think could possibly yield an out, because he went to 4 from the fetch making it impossible to block both elephants.

I used this situation to convey how hard it is to play this deck. That was a game-ending play, and it wasn't particularly subtle to identify. I believe my misplay was due to a lack of experience combined with the excitement of thinking I was a lock for top eight. Also, I was under-analyzing what outs he had, believing that his only way to deal with my 4/4s was to chump block into oblivion. Wrath wasn't played in Trinket Angel, so it wasn't on my radar. I'm not saying that you should think about every possible out they have access to in the format; I am saying that it can become very easy to stop playing as tight as possible in an overly advantageous position. Don't let it happen. Instead play every situation in constant awareness of your options; I had over five minutes left in the round. If I wouldn't have been so hasty in allowing him to resolve his fetch activation, I could have identified the play and sent him packing.

I walked away from this event 3-3 after starting 3-0 without a loss. I scooped to my friend Matt (who won the tournament) in the 4th round, then played Trinket Angel. In the last round, I scooped to my opponent who was in with a win, while I was an extremely outside chance at 4-2. I was dissatisfied with both my play and my results, and I think it's important to remember the big mistakes, because it allows us to gain a lot of experience and grow and recognize our position in the future. That dissatisfaction instilled in me the desire to improve, and I feel like I need to do something about that during this Extended season.

See you at the PTQs.

After getting out of class today, I was killing some time online and realized that the Lorwyn draft sim was up and running. I have no idea if it's been up all week and I'm just completely oblivious to everything, or if it's just come up today. Regardless, I wanted to get in and try drafting a few different archetypes to prep for my local release tournament, which features a lot of solid players. We actually do swiss rounds and a top 8 draft, whereas I'm told that the player with the best swiss record gets the prizes in most areas.

 

Anyway, I go into the draft wondering if it could possibly be accurate so early on, and get answered somewhere in pack one, I think, when I receive a mid-pick Ajani (6th). White didn't seem THAT wide open, so now I'm wondering how viable this draft is. I get a second 7th pick Ajani in pack three and decide that this was a  fluke, because there's no way he should be going past 3rd, especially since white is probably the deepest playable color in the set.

 

I finally finish(for some reason it loads glacially slow on my computer), and accomplish what I wanted to going in: a strong aggro based Kithkin deck powered by Mulldrifters and tricks like Pestermite. Here is the deck, for reference:

 

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/Deck.asp?ID=176106

 

(Faerie Trickery is obviously wrong here for the maindeck; I think I should have just added another kithkin dork and brought in the counterspell for game two if they have mass removal or a problematic spell like a planeswalker.)

 

I don't know how viable this archetype will be once players start to realize that Mulldrifter is utterly ridiculous (best common, it's even better than Oblivion Ring), but I do know that I would be severely disappointed to do any worse than 3-0 with this deck.

Last week I read a blog posted by William Spaniel which addressed an issue with Mike Flores regarding the 'relationship' between Slaughter Pact and Tarmogoyf. William wrote a feature several weeks ago in which he devoted the first section to said relationship, in which he posits that the black pact will become a Standard format staple simply because it can kill the Lhurgoyf. I was baffled by this proclamation, not only because it was painfully obvious (at least the killing part), but because the competitive community had spent an entire PTQ season slaying the green monster in this way. I disagreed with the reasoning of the argument, but remained silent in the forums.

 

So in Flores' article on mtg.com this past Thursday, he comments that someone (who remains anonymous) mentions that same 'relationship' that Spaniel wrote about. Flores goes on to explain why such an idea is misguided, but WS actually gets on the gleemax forums and raises the issue, which is that Flores doesn't want to admit that he was really talking about the author of the Magic Musings series at magic.tcgplayer.com. Spaniel then gets on this site and blogs about the whole thing, and apparently thinks that he should be acknowledged by Mike for coming up with as brilliant a thought as "hurr dee durr this card kills this creature so it is good". William goes on to say that Mike is clearly biased in favor of SCG, and makes a jab at Flores in childish name calling.

 

After reading all of this BS, I have only a few thoughts. First off, Will-Span (or whatever he's being called now) is probably right. I would not be shocked if Flores got that notion from him. The fact is, a well-respected writer* that works for the mothership is not going to reference Spaniel in a WotC represented feature. Spaniel's attitude and character in general are some things that they really don't want to be associated with, and his constant need for attention on either side of the spectrum is what makes him such an undesired personality.

 

But, maybe this William Spaniel "Mr. Obv" approach could get me somewhere. If I had only been quicker to write an article last year about how Cryoclasm kills Islands, I might have been hailed as the guy who broke Standard.

 

 

 

 

*Well-respected is not the same as well-liked. I loathe Flores due to his over-sized ego, but cannot deny that his impact on the game has been substantial.

Two days ago, Bill Stark wrote a blog about a UG archetype he forces
in local drafts, which, as he explains, allows him to bury the opponent under card advantage and removal in any color. Having seen him draft it several times, I was set to draft it last
night at a local Wednesday draft. Unfortunately, Bill was
two seats to my left and kept me from dedicating myself to the archetype, which could
dry up at any moment. The outcome of my draft was RGu, after I got clear
signals that red was wide open, took D/G, Sudden Shock, 2x Ghost Fire, Grapeshot, and
Conflagrate as removal. I ended up 1-2 after continually getting flooded (My
curve was so low I definitely should have been playing 16 lands) and made the
absolutely awful non-play of Conflagrate, just straight up forgetting it was in
my yard (I had 4 lands in hand and my opponent had Mana Skimmer, Infiltraitor
il-Kor, and Pit Keeper).

Since failing to try out the archetype yesterday, I spent
most of this morning thinking about how to force UG(x/x/x), and how I would
draft it. With a couple hours to kill between classes, I got into the Draft
Simulator to try it and definitely got there:

1 Fathom Seer

1 Viscerid Deepwalker

1 Teferi’s Moat

1 Penumbra Spider

1 Weatherseed Totem

1 Durkwood Tracker

1 Sunlance

1 Chronozoa

2 Dreamscape Artist

1 Primal Plasma

1 Utopia Vow

1 Erratic Mutation

2 Aquamorph Entity

1 Nacatl War Pride

1 Edge of Autumn

2 Foresee

1 Aven Augur

1 Llanowar Empath

1 Cryptic Annelid

1 Greenseeker

1 Llanowar Reborn

7 Forest

7 Island

2 Plains

I did two others which turned out similarly (and one that
was a total train wreck), but this was my first try and it was unreal good, and I even got the splashes.

I would have had 3 Foresee until I realized that there was a
freaking War Pride in pack six (!). That probably shouldn't happen... like
ever. I watched the bot replays, and got kind of frustrated that the RG bot
could have second picked it, and instead passed it for Thornweald Archer. Umm, that
can’t be right. I mean, Archer is fine and all, but War Pride can and usually
does win you the game abruptly. I want to draft realistically, like in an 8-4
on modo, and the bots just can’t always do that for you. My local scene is
pretty mediocre at draft, but almost all of them know that Pride is good.

I missed a couple cards entirely in PLC. First up is Citanul
Woodreaders. The card is a key component of this archetype according to Bill,
especially with ways to abuse it like Tolarian Sentinal and/or Dreamstalker.
Fathom Seer is the deck’s mascot, but is much harder to get due to TSP being a
bigger set and the fact that Seer is also at the top of blue pick orders in
common. Burying your opponent under this kind of draw generated by Woodreaders,
Fathom Seer, and bounce effects is eminent when you have this amount of CA. The
second card I missed, which is less disappointing, is Shaper Parasite. That
card is always a first pick, and I raised the issue on another message board
during Nationals when Osyp first picked it over Jodah’s Avenger. Yes, sometimes
it is that good. I have a lot of removal though, and since the bots should be
first picking the ‘site, I don’t feel that bad about it.

The main problem with this draft is that I didn’t get many
beater dorks. I usually want a few fatties in this archetype, and had only one
chance at Kavu Primarch, which I did not take (Foresee instead). This card’s
playability is apparent and obvious, and makes it into almost any green deck. Therefore,
pretty much everyone values it very highly, since green creature quality at
common in FS is mediocre, and potential 7/7s aren’t exactly easy to kill.
Instead of green dorks, I got the average to good Aquamorph Entity, which is a
decent, and flexible card. Also, Chronozoa. Yeah, so lucky.

Another thing I wanted to mention was how this deck was set
up to support sprout swarm (not well, but decent enough). I drafted 2 mediocre Thallids
and one of the best ones (Germinator) in order to potentially go with the
sprouting DI plan. I also grabbed Strength in Numbers in a relatively weak
pack, which would have also been insane with said Sprout Swarm (and War Pride).
However, War Pride was the only card in my draft that I could see with
Strength, and felt that I valued all of the cards I played above it.

Specifically for this draft, I was able to splash white
almost too easily. Teferi’s Moat is awesome in limited, and with all the mana
fixing I had, I couldn’t justify not taking the Sunlance in pack 2. Sure, it’s
pretty bombo with Erratic Mutation, but that’s no different than running
Hit/Run in RB aggro. In most instances, red sees the splash because of all the quality removal
in TSP and PLC at common. Remember to aggressively draft Dreamscape Artist if
you don’t think it can table (I start taking them 4^th and later, and
usually that’s when I see them.

Lastly, I could have stretched the mana base and played Assassinate,
but didn't because I don't think it's that good of a removal spell and ended up
rating Utopia Vow above it. This may very well be wrong, as I’ve been told that
I definitely underrate Assassinate.

I'll try do to more of these in the future, though they'll range.

Andy

PS If I had the opportunity to play the above deck in an 8
man, I would be severely disappointed in anything less than 3-0. Cards like
Chronozoa and Nacatl War Pride are such a beating.

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