*Editor’s Note* – The Game Academy will host Legacy tournaments every Thursday; signups begin @ 6 PM and tournament entry is $7. All entry will be given back to top finishers in store credit to use towards anything in the store. Keith will always be in attendance, so if you have any questions or need deck advice don’t hesitate to ask! =)

I attended the SCG Open in Atlanta primarily with the intent of playing Legacy. Because I needed to enter four more events (and make at least one top 16), to qualify for the 50K, I decided that I’d play in standard even if I hated my deck.

Under some influence from John Cuvelier, I was fixed on running Open the Vaults. Since I don’t play a great deal of standard, I didn’t actually get to play test any games until the day before the event. About ten games later, I was done with the deck. Perhaps I just had no idea what I was doing, but I was getting crushed by outdated Mono-Red and Naya Allies, and I wasn’t doing so well against Jund either.

I tried weighing my other options, including chilling in the hotel all day and cube drafting, but decided that I should definitely play the event. I recalled Sam Riley talking about an insane Polymorph deck on our online discussion group. Moreover, Sam Riley had been trying to pawn off a few decks on our group in exchange for a cut of winnings. I decided to give him a call, and about ten hours later (less than twelve hours before the tournament), I had a 75-card copy of Riley’s UGW Polymorph ready to go. I played some practice games against Naya Allies, and it felt a bit over 50-50, though Mono-Red was still terrible. Whatever the case, the deck seemed pretty cool, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

4 Awakening Zone
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Deprive
2 Negate
3 Path To Exile
2 Iona, Shield Of Emeria
3 Elspeth, Knight-errant
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Day Of Judgment
4 Polymorph
4 See Beyond

1 Forest
4 Island
4 Plains
1 Arid Mesa
2 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Khalni Garden
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Seaside Citadel

Sideboard:
1 Realm Razer
4 Flashfreeze
2 Negate
1 Path To Exile
2 Silence
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
1 Progenitus
2 Day Of Judgment
1 Mountain

The Mountain and Realm Razer were supposed to be for control decks, but I never actually boarded them in as I’d rather just get Iona in nearly every situation.

—

Round 1 – Michael Chen – UW Control

I started with a double mull, but hit all my land drops, while Chen was stuck on two after keeping his six. I was able to apply pressure with Elspeth and eventually resolved a Polymorph with Deprive backup.

+2 Negate, +2 Silence, -1 Elspeth, -2 Day of Judgment, -1 Path to Exile

In game two, I kept six, and ran out a turn three Awakening Zone. Michael fired back with Jace, the Mindsculptor, but I called with Elspeth. After my Soldiers took down Jace, I played one of my own, and had a Deprive for Michael’s Baneslayer Angel. Several turns later, I dug into a Polymorph, and Michael scooped it up.

1-0

Round 2 – Kennen Haas – Bant Aggro

Kennen, a local player, brought a rogue Bant aggro deck featuring the very annoying River Boa. In game one, Kennen brought some heat with multiple Rhox War Monks, but I had Awakening Zone to soak up much of the damage. Eventually, Iona came down on white, and we were off to the races. An Elspeth eventually came down to throw off some of the math, and I was able to pick up game one.

+2 Silence, +1 Path to Exile, -1 Elspeth, -1 Negate, -1 Awakening Zone

In game two, I was able to hold off Kennen’s offensive, including some River Boa beats, by holding all my Islands. On one of Kennen’s turns we had a counter war over a Garruk or something, then I untapped and played an upkeep Silence in response to my Awakening Zone trigger. With only two or three mana up, Kennen was helpless to my mainphase Polymorph into Iona on white. Kennen had a few turns to draw into an Into the Roil with counter backup, but despite several Explores and Ponders, was unable to get there.

2-0

Round 3 – Steve Smith – Mono White Control

Steve literally did nothing besides play a few Knight of the White Orchids and Everflowing Chalices. He was able to ramp into a lot of mana both games, which made me fear Into the Dust — so much so, that I boarded into Emrakul, figuring he’d have to be an idiot to not board out Day of Judgment, and Oblivion Ring would likely be played on my Planewalkers.

-2 Iona, -2 Day of Judgment, +1 Emrakul, +1 Negate, +1 Path to Exile, +1 Silence

3-0

Round 4 – Derek Davis – ?????

I have no recollection of this round, but my score sheet shows him gaining eight life at some point, so he must’ve been hitting me with Rhox War Monk and Baneslayer or an Elspeth’d Baneslayer.

4-0

Round 5 – August Benard Caras – WW/g

August was playing a pretty cool white weenie variant with Student of Warfare, Ranger of Eos and Stoneforger Mystic, with green for Knight of the Reliquary and Stirring Wildwood. He came out the gates quickly in game one, but I had Day od Judgment along with the typical ground clogging Elspeths and Awakening Zones for games two and three.

-2 Deprive, -2 Negate, +2 Day of Judgment, +1 Silence, +1 Path to Exile

5-0

Round 6 – Jeffrey Loveday – Naya Allies

I was able to steal a very close game one from Jeffrey with Iona on red, when he left only Ancient Ziggurat untapped on the end of turn five. I mulled to five in game two, and wound up land flooded, while in game three, Jeff had a very fast draw, and had time walked myself too many times with “comes into play tapped” lands.

-4 Deprive, -2 Negate, +2 Silence, +1 Path to Exile, +2 Day of Judgment, +1 Flashfreeze

5-1

(At this point Riley had been knocked out of top 8 contention at 4-2.)

Round 7 – Isaiah Ley – UG Polymorph

Game one was very epic, taking nearly the entire fifty minutes. I kept a four lander, but didn’t draw another spell until around turn seven. By then, the board was something like my Elspeth, Colonnade and Awakening Zone versus Jace, the Mindsculptor, Garruk (with three dudes, and four loyalty) and a polymorphed Iona (on White). I was able to attack Isaiah to to three with the Elspeth’d Colonnade, while he raced back with Iona. At three, Isaiah finally was able to deal with Elspeth, bouncing it with an Into the Roil. He attacked with Iona (dropping me to six), then Polymorphed the tapped Iona into an untapped one. On my turn, holding four lands and two Elspeth, I drew See Beyond. See Beyond hit another See Beyond, which hit a third See Beyond. By now, I had Deprive and Polymorph in hand. I went for Polymorph on Isaiah’s Iona, killing it and revealing his library. Based on this information, it appeared he had a Negate in hand. Since I was dead if I passed turn, I had no option but to tap out for Elspeth. To my surprise, it resolved, and some random token got in for the last three damage. Phew…

-2 Elspeth, -1 Iona, -2 Day of Judgment, +2 Negate, +2 Silence, +1 Path to Exile

Because there wasn’t much time left in the round, I boarded with the intention of locking Isaiah out of Polymorph, with no real intention of outright winning the game. Ironically, Isaiah, in desperation, tapped out for Garruk or something, and I was able to resolve Polymorph into Iona on blue.

6-1

Round 8 – David Sharfman – Jund

The match was featured on ggslive.com. See it here:
Video 1
Video 2

-1 Negate, -1 Jace, the Mindsculptor, -2 Deprive, -2 Iona, +1 Path to Exile, +1 Emrakul, +4 Flashfreeze

Game two is missing, but was fairly anticlimatic. Sharfman fired off a few Duresses early, but had very little pressure. Somewhat later, Sharfman tapped down for some threat, and got Emrakul’d.

Round 9 – David Yancey – Chapin Mono Red

The matchup was depressing. It was even close to close. David started game one, on the play, with double Goblin Guide. I tried to make some blockers with Elspeth, but they all met Searing Blaze. Game two was more of the same, with David leading out with Goblin Guide and a Dragonlord, with multiple Searing Blazes for Awakening Zone tokens and such.

-1 Jace, the Mindsculptor, -2 Negate, -4 Deprive, +4 Flashfreeze, +2 Silence, +1 Path to Exile

Round 10 – Jason Byram – Naya Allies

Jason started with a mulligan, and was very quickly facing down an Iona on white. He was able to get in with a few allies, but his Bloodbraids kept hitting white spells, and I had plenty of tokens with which to chump. With the life totals 10-13, I attacked with Iona, then played Jace to bounce Bloodbraid. Bloodbraid came back down, and hit another white spell, at which point Jason scooped it up.

-4 Deprive, -2 Negate, +2 Silence, +1 Path to Exile, +2 Day of Judgment, +1 Flashfreeze

Jason started game two with a turn two Harabaz Druid, but with Day of Judgment in hand, I mentally took a victory lap. On his second turn, Jason ran out three other allies. None had haste, and I wound up clearing the board still at 20 life. Jason played a few more guys on the following turn, but I had a Path and Oblivion Ring. An Elspeth came down on the following turn, and had no problem racing with the few creatures Jason had left.

—–

I finished in 12th place, which is good enough to get the points I need to qualify for the $50K provided I play in at least one other Open.

After the event, Riley and I discussed possible changes to the deck. I think the deck is pretty close to perfect, though I had some mana hiccups along the way. I think I’d try tweaking the mana base some, and probably try out Terramorphic Expanse, since it gives some more fixing without making Glacial Fortress terrible. Additionally, with Stark’s Planeswalker deck shaping up to be the ‘deck to beat,’ it’d probably serve well to add an addition Oblivion Ring in the main.
What’s particularly nice about the deck, is you have access to way more counterspells than any other deck in the format. I think that gives Polymorph a huge advantage in control matchups. The only real problematic matchup is mono-red aggro, but you’re likely not going to beat them with the Planeswalker deck either.

Also, I have no idea what the Progentius in the sideboard is for. Maybe someone reading this can tell me. Whatever the case, it’s getting the axe for now.

4 Awakening Zone
3 Oblivion Ring
3 Deprive
2 Negate
3 Path To Exile
2 Iona, Shield Of Emeria
3 Elspeth, Knight-errant
3 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Day Of Judgment
4 Polymorph
4 See Beyond

1 Forest
4 Island
4 Plains
1 Arid Mesa
2 Celestial Colonnade
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Khalni Garden
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Seaside Citadel

Sideboard:
1 Deprive
3 Celestial Purge
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Flashfreeze
2 Negate
1 Path To Exile
2 Silence
1 Emrakul, The Aeons Torn
2 Day Of Judgment

Speaking of Mono-Red, that deck seems utterly busted in this metagame. If I were to start testing for Grand Prix DC, or Regionals, I’d start with Taylor Raflowitz’s build with some minor updates. Taylor seems to be an actual master of the game, so I’m much more comfortable running something he’s been tweaking and testing with than some random net list.

Maindeck:
4 Ball Lightning
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
4 Hell’s Thunder
4 Plated Geopede
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Searing Blaze
3 Staggershock
3 Devastating Summons

13 Mountain
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Teetering Peaks

Sideboard:
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
3 Manabarbs
2 Unstable Footing
3 Earthquake
3 Quenchable Fire

It should have a pretty easy time taking down Polymorph and Planeswalkers, with a 50-50′ish Jund and Naya Allies matchups. I imagine Bant might be hard, and if the UW Control decks care enough, those matchups could be hard also, but UW Control has bigger fish to fry, since they pretty much get curb stomped by Polymorph and Planeswalkers.

For those curious, I scrubbed out of the Legacy with Life & Taxes. You can read more about that deck on my blog. I still feel it’s a pretty strong deck in the current metagame, but sometimes you just lose to Pernicious Deed.dec.

–

Keith McLaughlin

*Editor’s Note* – The Game Academy hosts an EDH league every Sunday; tournament signups begin @ 2 PM and tournament entry is $7. All entry will be given back to top finishers in store credit to use towards anything in the store. Jeremy is always in attendance to play EDH in our league, offer deck advice, and record matches for his popular YouTube channel. If you don’t have an EDH deck, don’t worry, we normally have a few extras if you want to play. See you here!
Elder Dragon Highlander:  Collector’s Edition Part II

This week we will pick up where last week left us.  We embarked on the journey into Magic the Gathering.  Some follow the path for competitive purposes, others will to amass a giant collection.  Many players seek fun and most of us are in for a little of each.  We perused a list of the top EDH cards for each color.  If you did not get a chance to catch the list, I have decided to copy it here one more time.

When I first started playing EDH, I found deck lists mind boggling.  Hundred card singleton lists are very difficult to comprehend without some framing or explanation about card choices and synergies.  Some folks try to assemble a good stuff type list that just plays a bunch of powerful cards, but this is nearly almost always a sure-fire way to end up with a suboptimal list.  Synergies and card interactions put EDH decks over-the-proverbial-top.  Therefore, you need to identify the most amazing cards that fit together to accomplish your given game plan.

With that disclaimer, it still seems relevant to create lists that collect the most powerful cards.  I love these lists and having discussions about the best cards in a color.  These discussions can help players consider cards they might have missed or may allow a deck builder to double up on effects that fit a deck’s theme or enhance the function.

Back in the day (you know the one), when I started playing EDH.  If followed deck construction advice from community forum members like Zerg (may he rest in peace) and others on various EDH forums.  I would follow Sheldon Menery’s columns and updates on the banned list, and would scour the internets for a reasonable explanation of popular deck lists.  Here are some interesting words of advice from Zerg in his forum post concerning some of the most important card to include in your EDH decks.  His descriptions are brief, but you get the general idea.

“Colorless

• Sensei’s Divining Top – anywhere. Period. Unless your playgroup is excessively annoyed by it.
• Lightning Greaves – for any deck that plans on attacking or has creatures that need to stay alive.
• Journeyer’s Kite – supplies you with lands forever, or until blown up. Mandatory in any nongreen deck.
• Gauntlet of Power and Extraplanar Lens – any monocolored deck. These cards are stupidgood.
• Nevinyrral’s Disk and Oblivion Stone – essential effect in any EDH deck and only available on two cards outside of white.
• Mind’s Eye – one of the best card draw engines in multiplayer, and available to any color.
• Solemn Simulacrum – Just really, really good.
• Sol Ring – Best artifact mana accel in the game.
• Thawing Glaciers – fills the same role as kite, every other turn.
• Maze of Ith – Surprisingly few creatures can get around it, it’s hard to remove (being a land) and fits in every deck.
• Strip Mine – utility nonbasics come with a lot of drawbacks, such as not being not fetchable by most land search cards, not benefitting from gauntlet/lens/etc, and usually not producing colored mana. However, some utility is just too strong to ignore. Same applies to every other land that made a cut to be on this list.

Black

• Yawgmoth’s Will – best card in Magic.
• Necropotence – best card draw spell in EDH.
• Cabal Coffers – Gauntlet of Power #3 in monoblack.
• Volrath’s Stronghold – Many decks would spend an actual card slot on this effect. Stronghold doesn’t even cost you a slot.
• Demonic Tutor &Co. – obvious card is obvious.
• Myojin of Night’s Reach – everyone’s hand goes “bye”. 9000 style points if whoever played it doesn’t activate the ability immediately, passes priority, and you sudden death it.
• Transmute cards – Yes, any card that merely searches for Yawgwin is good enough to make the “best of the best” list.
• Reanimation – one of the key strengths of black. Reanimation is often cheaper, more flexible, and more powerful than that creature you were thinking of adding to your deck.

Blue

• Control Magic &Co. – just like reanimation, it saves you mana, but also serves as removal, albeit usually less flexible than reanimation
• Countermagic –  often underrated in multiplayer because you “can’t counter everything”. The key is to use it to protect your other cards, not try to remove every threat.
• Magus of the Future / Future Sight – absurdity is directly proportional to the amount of mana you have, multiplied by the number of shuffle effects and tripled with Divining Top in play. The only two cards that have the potential to be dumber than Yawgwin.
• Hinder –  the easiest way in the game to say “bye, general!”
• [s]Gifts Ungiven[/s] – combo deck wins (for best results combine with Yawgwin or Eternal Witness in hand).
• Academy Ruins – See Volrath’s Stronghold.

White

• Land Tax and Weathered Wayfarer – these can be as good as green’s land search, but it’s only two cards.
• Sweepers – being able to remove anything and everything at once is white’s main strength. Be sure to include some, this is the only color that has plenty of options. Final Judgment, Hallowed Burial, Austere Command, and Rout, are usually the best.
• Condemn – Right below Hinder.
• Return to Dust – It might be silly to include a random artifact removal spell in this list, but I’ve been owned by this card so many times.
• Mistveil Plains – Probably one of the most underrated cards in the game. Combined with a tutor, you have the ability to fetch anything back from your graveyard. Also searcheable with fetchlands and hoses reanimation targeting your graveyard.

Green

• Eternal Witness – green is the only color with “return any card” effects, which are incredibly strong. Witness is by far the most abuseable of these.
• Far Wanderings – I have no idea why this isn’t in every green deck. Fetching 3 lands for 3 mana is nuts. (Keep in mind that you have threshold for about 80% of the duration of the game).
• Mana Reflection – see Gauntlet of Power.
• Tooth and Nail and Chord of Calling – chances are you have some fat creatures in your deck that you’d like in play. These are the best ways to do that.

Red

• Wheel of Fortune – the only card in red that’s on par with blue and black card draw. It’s damn good, but sadly, it’s the only thing red has.
• Reiterate – redirection/copy effects are great in general, but reiterate is head and shoulders above the rest. Nothing like copying an opponent’s cruel ultimatum. Twice. And still keeping the reiterate. In fact, this card is pretty much the only reason I want to play red.
• Gauntlet of Might – monored red gets an extra gauntlet of power, if you can afford one.
• Insurrection – usually enough to kill one opponent in multiplayer.

Multicolored

• Mirari’s Wake – Mana reflection, but better.
• Cruel Ultimatum – Just reminding you this card exists. If you don’t know what it does, click the link and read it.
• Vindicate – Tie fighters.
• Maelstrom Pulse – Not quite tie fighters.
• Terminate / Mortify / Putrefy – no reason not to have these.
• Debtor’s Knell – You’ll find something ridiculous to do with this every time you play it.

Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion – double strike is potentially very powerful and having it on a land means it’s reusable, doesn’t cost you a card, and wastes no slots in the deck.”

These thoughts do not totally match up with my thinking about EDH deck construction.  Some of the cards I find to be underpowered, too specific, or generally outclassed (e.g. Cruel Ultimatum, Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion, and Journeyer’s Kite).  However, the advice runs fairly consistent and helped shape my early thinking.  Eventually, I made it a goal to form a collection of EDH staples and core cards that would serve as the foundation for my deck construction.  I made this decision some time ago along with the idea that I would snatch up foils of my favorite staples and copies of the dual lands and older cards.  Subsequently, the Legacy format has jumped off and my collection of staples has turned into a nice investment rewarding not only in terms of the playability and fantastic aid in deck construction but also financially.

I would like to share some of the hottest movers on the EDH scene and would emplore those wishing to build a similar style collection to act fast.  Every couple of months the cards seem to take a dramatic leap in cost/value.

Buy Now:  For Fun and Profit

Let’s start with some of the cards that are both going to bowl you over and that might be a little obvious.  They might be apparent, but some folks are still out there with holes in their collections.  These are among the first cards that I would obtain and should always be on the “needed” or “wanted” lists.  At times these cards trade like a second currency, but time has proven them to be a stable investment that offers little risk.  If you are ever done with these cards you can ship them for about what you paid or more.

Dual Lands

You don’t have to play with dual lands to be successful in EDH.  However, they are simply the best lands that you can play with if you are looking to fix colors and diversify your mana-base.  If you need to be in both Blue and Black, then you have some options.  The pimped out choice is Underground Sea.  The runner up is Watery Grave, and somewhere following are cards like Underground River, Sunken Ruins, and tap lands that generate the needed colors. Here is the hitch:  as of March 24, 2010 the most inexpensive Underground Sea on popular retail sites (in near mint condition) will cost about $85.  Twelve months ago, you could have landed them for around $60.  Some of the dual lands have nearly doubled in price.  The lands with “less popular” (read as non-blue) colors have shot up from around $25 to over $40.  In early March, Wizards of the Coast announced that they will never reprint the revised (original) dual lands.  Therefore, they are likely going to continue their rise in price.  Pick these up now.

3^rd Edition/Revised

Badlands                    $40

Bayou                         $50

Plateau                       $40

Savannah                   $40+

Scrubland                   $40

Taiga                           $50

Tropical Island          $60+

Tundra                       $70

Underground Sea      $90

Judge Foils/Promo Foils

The DCI and folks at Wizards of the Coast have had their eye on EDH for a long time.  The format expanded its popularity in the judge community and Aaron Forsythe, head of Magic’s research and development, explained in an interview conducted on Youtube (Elderdragonhighlandr Interview Series) that EDH has been on the mind of developers for some time now.  Evidence pops up when you see a hefty multi-colored legendary general or giant octopus like Lorthos.  Further evidence can be found in the printing of the Judge promo cards released as payment and thanks for judges working at sanctioned events.

If you look over some of the staples listed in the format, you can nearly cross reference some of the most popular cards with the Judge promo list.  Let’s browse a couple of selections:

Promo Versions

Sol Ring                      $50+

Maze of Ith                 $40

Yawgmoth’s Will       $20

Demonic Tutor          $40

Wheel of Fortune      Unreleased (coming soon)

Foil Fetch Lands        $30-60

Aside from these judge foils, there are any number of FNM foils and promotional foils that cover the staple cards in EDH.  Eternal Witness and Necropotence can each be found reasonably.  Basically, any of these foil, promotional staples are desirable for EDH collectors.

From the Vault:  EDH Staples

Another area that Wizards has shown love to the EDH community involves the limited release, From the Vault series.  The first set was dragons and offered foil versions of some of the game’s most desirable foil dragon generals.  My favorite is Nicol Bolas.  However, the second From the Vault release secured foil versions of cards that were either impossible or improbable to find in foil.  Examples include the now banned Gifts Ungiven and the oft used staples of Mystical Tutor and Sensi’s Divining Top.  If you can find these products they are surefire EDH winners.  I keep a set and open a set for play in my decks.  Make sure to check out the upcoming From the Vault: Artifacts.  There are going to be even more EDH staples in that set.

Foreign Black Border and Rare Foils

Some cards cannot be found in foil.  For those cards, many players chase the foreign black border versions or original Alpha/Beta cards.  My dream is to own a complete collection of foreign black border dual lands.  If you are chasing the dream, you will have to be vigilant.  Stores might take a wants list and could notify you if the chase cards come through the doors.  You might happen upon them on eBay, but they are hard to find.  Occasionally, there are EDH staples or great cards that were in very short print like Moat and Mana Drain from Legends and the ever-popular Force of Will.  Those cards are likely going to increase in price and should be eventual additions to your collections.

Finally, folks should take the time to note that some cards are barely found in foil.  Merchant Scroll is a great edition for an EDH deck, but the 8^th edition foil is the only foil printing.  The uncommon is worth about $1 but its foil version is worth $25.  This situation happens occasionally.  Some promo cards are rare (like Swords to Plowshares) or the foil just drives the price.  You might watch for deals on these cards or find them in a foil bin for a great price.

I hope this series has been helpful and informative.  Thanks to the forum posters and folks who chase all of these amazing cards.  The hunt is half of the fun.

*Editor’s Note* – The Game Academy will host Legacy tournaments every Thursday; signups begin @ 6 PM and tournament entry is $7. All entry will be given back to top finishers in store credit to use towards anything in the store. Keith will always be in attendance, so if you have any questions or need deck advice don’t hesitate to ask! =)

With Pro Tour San Diego in the books, we’ve come to find ourselves, yet again, in an uphill battle against the dreaded Jund. Although only three copies of Jund made the final tables at PT:SD, two of them wound up face-to-face in the finals. With results like this, it’s no suprise to see so many players proclaiming Jund as the “best” deck in the format. But is this actually the case?

The people running PT:SD were kind enough to supply the decklists for every participant in the entire PT (aside from a few dozen lists that were omitted, presumably on accident). Although, I had to go through each decklist by hand to determine all the archetypes, once I had those, along with the match results, I wrote some code to perform some analysis. Before I get into the details, let me first introduce the archetypes (omitting those that were played by less than five players).

——————–
(380 decks recorded in total)

Jund — 95 players (79 w/Leech, 16 w/out)
The BGR aggro deck, centered around Blightning, Sprouting Thrinax, Broodmate Dragon and Maelstrom Pulse. A very large number of cards in the deck are capable of generating card advantage, whether that be through the cascade mechanic, discard-effects, Planeswalkers, or otherwise. Because of it’s large numbers, I’ve divided Jund into versions with and without Putrid Leech.

WW — 42 players
People used to joke that white weenie was an archetype defined by the ability to get as many creatures in play as fast as possible so they could all die to Wrath of God. Now with the printing of Stoneforge Mystic and Kor Firewalker, in addition to the already fine arsenal of Steppe Lynx, Elspeth and Path to Exile, WW has become a real fine choice in standard.

Vamps — 30 players
Oh Edward! Wizards has obviously pushed Vampires to be a contender with Vampire Nighthawk, Gatekeeper of Malakir and Vampire Nocturnus. Worldwake gives the deck another weapon in the form of Kalastria Highborn. Mind Sludge seems to be optional in this deck, although it’s hard to imagine losing a game when one resolves.

URW — 30 players
The control deck revolving around bad counter-spells, Ajani Vengeant and Earthquake, typically using Sphinx of Jwar Isle for the kill. LSV and others briefly promoted this deck prior to the release of Worldwake.

MonoRed — 19 players
Ball Lightning and Lightning Bolt! Is this 1997? Deadguy red is back. There’s no Fireblast or Cursed Scroll shenanigans, but Goblin Guide and Searing Blaze are still fairly powerful.

Junk — 19 players
PT Junk was a popular archetype in Extended after the printing of Pernicious Deed and Vindicate in Apocalyspe. The GWB deck’s strategy was to play the best removal, disruption and creatures. Today, many of the best creatures are still in green and white. Add Maelstrom Pulse to the mix, and you have the 2010 version of Junk.

UWControl — 18 players
With their new Worldwake tools, many swapped out their Ajani Vengeants and Earthquakes from URW, and replaced them with Treasure Hunts and Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Pat Chapin’s nearly-creatureless UW Control deck is kept distinct from this category.

BossNaya — 14 players
The latest creation from ChannelFireball, this GRW Naya list tries to imitate Jund, by generating as much card advantage as possible, without actually playing blue spells. Along with the usual Bloodbraid Elf and Ranger of Eos, Boss Naya runs Stirring Wildwood, Raging Ravine and Sejiri Steppe to turn Knight of the Reliquary into a card advantage engine. The presence of Stoneforge Mystic, and sideboarded Cunning Sparkmages gives the deck easy access to the brutal Sparkmage + Basilisk Combo.

Bant — 12 players
This, like Junk, simply takes a couple of cards and shuffles them into a stack of green and white dudes. In this case, the cards of interest are Jace, the Mindsculptor and Rhox War Monk.

SummoningTrap — 8 players
Basically a Bant deck in the early game, but with 4x Summoning Trap and 4x Iona, Shield of Emeria. Iona is lights-out for many of the decks in the field, while Summoning Trap is a very brutal trick against decks trying to resolve Double Negatives and Essence Scatters.

Time Sieve — 7 players
Time Sieve uses card drawing engines to put tons of artifacts in play, then sacrificing them to take extra turns with Time Sieve. Time Warps and Fog-effects along with spells like Howling Mine and Jace Beleren fuel the deck, until it builds up to a huge Open the Vaults. Tezzeret is typically the kill spell.

Grixis — 7 players
Similar to URW, but ixnay the Ajani Vengeants, Baneslayer Angels and Path to Exiles in favor of Cruel Ultimatum, Blightning and Terminate.

Eldrazi — 7 players
Eldrazi green is the prototypical mono-green aggro deck. The deck relies on getting several guys into play, and powering them through with Garruk Wildspeaker’s ultimate or Eldrazi Monument.

BigNaya — 6 players
Many players brought a more-midrange GRW aggro deck featuring multiple copies of Acidic Slime, Baneslayer Angels and a singleton Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs, all powered out by Lotus Cobra and Trace of Abundance.

BantControl — 6 players
This UGW mid-range aggro/control deck mixes some of the best mana accelerators (Noble Hierarch and Birds of Paradise) to power out Garruk Wildspeaker and Jace, the Mind Sculptor, while playing strong defensive creatures (Calcite Snapper and Rhox War Monk) to protect them.

Valakut — 5 players
Valakut picked up some steam at the beginning of Zendikar standard, before falling off the radar for the most part. It tries to abuse Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle by running as many Mountains as possible along with Khalni-Heart Expedition, Harrow, Explore and Rampant Growth.

Mythic — 5 players
Yet another Bant deck. This version has been promoted by one Zvi Mowshowitz. It attempts to outclass other decks by always having the biggest, most-lethal creature, either on it’s own merit, or via Finest Hour or Rafiq of the Many.

Jacerator — 5 players
Similar to Time Sieve, this deck uses Howling Mines and Jace Beleren in conjunction with Time Warps and Fogs as fuel. In this archetype, the card drawing the opponent is doing is eventually turned against him/her, typically via Archive Trap.

Boros — 5 players
Boros plays the most aggressive creatures in red and white, such as Steppe Lynx, Goblin Guide and Elite Vanguard. Ranger of Eos fetching Goblin Bushwhacker is typically the selling point of the deck, being able to go from an empty board to nine-to-the-face in a single turn.

————————–

Phew. That’s a lot of archetypes. Although a Pro Tour may not be the best place to make a metagame prediction for your local SCG 5K or FNM, it’s certainly worth taking a look. With 95 players running Jund, that’s 25% of the entire metagame. Coming in a distant second was White Weenie with only 11%, with Vamps and URW in third at 8% a piece.

When going into a tournament, the important number is likely not the percentage of *players* pilotting a particular deck, but rather how many matches will be played with each deck in total. For example, if you’re in a tournament where there are ten players running Deck X (out of 100 players total), but nine of those players are out of the tournament by round three, then counting X as 10% of the metagame is clearly a mistake.
Rather, we should add up every match played by X, and divide by the total number of matches played in the entire tournament. Here are those numbers for the top 15 decks.

———————
Matches % Deckname
503 0.216810 LeechJund
287 0.123707 WW
181 0.078017 URW
173 0.074569 Vamps
117 0.050431 Junk
114 0.049138 MonoRed
92 0.039655 BossNaya
86 0.037069 NoLeechJund
81 0.034914 UWControl
72 0.031034 Bant
50 0.021552 SummoningTrap
38 0.016379 Sieve
38 0.016379 Grixis
37 0.015948 BantControl
36 0.015517 BigNaya
34 0.014655 Mythic
34 0.014655 Boros
33 0.014224 GWKnightfall
31 0.013362 Valakut
28 0.012069 Eldrazi
———————–

Here we see, that while the numbers for some of the decks clearly reflect the popularity of each deck, we also see some big movers. GWKnightfall wasn’t even mentioned previously, as it was only piloted by three players (1.05%), but the deck managed to play in 1.4% of all matches. That’s a rather large move, considering the scarcity of the deck. BossNaya made an even bigger jump, from 37% to nearly 40%, while Eldrazi players clearly didn’t fare too well, only playing in 12% of all matches, despite being run by almost 16% of the participants. We would expect that these numbers be noticable in the match win percentages for each archetype, and that turns out to, in fact, be the case.

———————
(25 match minimum)
WinPCT W-L Deck
0.785714 22-6 ChapinUW
0.678571 57-27 BossNaya
0.676471 23-11 Mythic
0.617647 21-13 Boros
0.591837 145-100 WW
0.545455 18-15 GWKnightfall
0.531017 214-189 LeechJund
0.522124 59-54 Junk
0.509091 56-54 MonoRed
0.490566 78-81 Vamps
0.486111 35-37 Bant
0.483871 15-16 Valakut
0.480000 24-26 SummoningTrap
0.472222 17-19 BigNaya
0.464286 39-45 NoLeechJund
0.432432 16-21 BantControl
0.411765 14-20 Grixis
0.396450 67-102 URW
0.346154 9-17 Eldrazi
0.333333 12-24 Sieve
0.306667 23-52 UWControl
———————–

First, we find that Eldrazi in fact put up some pitiful numbers, while BossNaya and GWKnightfall fared particularly well, but that’s all beside the point. If you want to know how often you will play a particular match up, it doesn’t make sense to calculate what percentage of players are piloting that deck, but rather how many matches are played with it — in the case of PT:SD, you’d be far more likely to play against GWKnightfall and BossNaya than one might first expect.

Second, a very humorous result is that while ChapinUW put up the best match win percent by a huge margin, all other UW Control strategies combined put up the worst! I guess those Calcite Snappers and Wall of Denials aren’t so great when Day of Judgment kills them all. URW also appeared to be an extremely weak strategy, only winning 39.6% of it’s matches.

Third, for quite some time people couldn’t decide whether Putrid Leech belonged in Jund lists. The mistake some players make, is to think it’s an auto-include, because a 4/4 for 2 is obviously quite good. I don’t think that’s the true dilemma. Rather, it’s the constraint it’s mana cost puts on the deck. With so many lands that come into play tapped, along with an already shaky mana base, having BG up on turn two isn’t guaranteed. However, it apparently happens often enough, as the Jund lists with Leech fared much better than those which cut the Leech (53% wins versus 46%). This, perhaps, emphasizes the utility of this sort of analysis. Simply trying to play games with the Leech and no-Leech versions, one would have to play twenty matches to just begin to detect a difference of 5%. Given the variance in Magic, to make a confident stance that the no-Leech version is
inferior would likely take upwards of 50 to 100 matches. Well, here it is for free. Run the Leech.

Fourth, UWChapin, BossNaya and Mythic are clearly the front-runners to take the format, with each winning over 65% of it’s matches. To put that in perspective, in my analysis of the Legacy portion of SCG 5K Richmond (coming soon), not a single deck won 65% of it’s matches. Those are truly fantastic numbers.

Fifth, many archetypes which have been thought to be particularly strong, MonoRed, Junk, Vamps and Bant are actually quite mediocre, all within 3% of 50-50. You may as well be running SummoningTrap or Valakut, if you want to run these decks.

And most importantly, according to these statistics, Jund is clearly NOT the best deck. In fact, it’s performance was rather mediocre (besides winning the whole event), with a win percentage 6% lower than WW, 8% lower than Boros, and 12% lower than the 65% threshold.

That’s right. Jund isn’t the best deck***. In fact, it’s far from it. Now, perhaps, many of the lists played in PT:SD were inferior, but seriously, how difficult is it to build Jund. The biggest decision to be made (aside from Leech), is whether to run 26 or 27 lands. That’s hardly pivotal. Perhaps that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but we are talking about a Pro Tour here. None of the Jund players are running Grizzly Bears, Vampire Aristocrat, or anything else that is obviously bad. If you want to win playing Jund, clearly the most important thing to do is to practice your cascades, because unless you’re Bloodbraids are hitting Blightnings every time, you’re looking to win ~53% of your matches.

(*** Disclaimer: Jund still might be the *strongest* deck, with it’s win percentage pulled down by mirror-matches, but going into a tournament one doesn’t care _who_ he (or she) wins/loses against. Keep in mind, that if a deck wins 65% of it’s matches, and Jund is 25% of the field, that deck is likely doing quite well against Jund.)

For the finale, I present to you, the match-up grid from PT:SD:

Along the top row and left-most column are archetypes, and in each intersecting cell, we have the win-loss data for that particular matchup. The table should be read such that LeechJund is (24-9) against Vamps.

As expected, the decks that put up the best win-percetages, with the exception of one, put up strong numbers against Jund. WW (45-22), ChapinUW (3-1), Boros (5-1) and Mythic (6-2). The exception, BossNaya, still put up decent numbers against LeechJund (10-11) — making this matchup comparable to the Jund-Jund mirror, except in this case, BossNaya is clearly stronger against the rest of the metagame, winning 46 of it’s remaining 63 matches.

————————————-

That’s all I’ve got for standard. I’m really not a big fan of the format, to be honest — clearly I’m a Legacy player. I’ve already got my next article in the works, which will be analysis similar to this, except for Legacy SCG 5K Richmond. If you don’t hear from me again before the 27th, I’d like to wish all of you “good luck” in SCG 5K Orlando, and I hope that these numbers prove to be helpful. Feel free to leave questions/comments here, or hit me up on facebook.

Keith McLaughlin

*Editor’s Note* – The Game Academy will host Legacy tournaments every Thursday; signups begin @ 6 PM and tournament entry is $7. All entry will be given back to top finishers in store credit to use towards anything in the store. Keith will always be in attendance, so if you have any questions or need deck advice don’t hesitate to ask! =)

Since the last time you’ve all heard from me, I made some significant changes to the Life deck, now incorporating Black in the main deck, replacing Meddling Mage and Pithing Needle with Thoughtseize and Tidehollow Sculler. I’m a big fan of the new changes, as being able to know exactly what your opponent can do to stop you from going-off is extremely valuable information. That’s not to mention some of the cute tricks you can do with a Tidehollow Sculler with Vial [1] or Diamond Valley [2]. Additionally, Doran becomes much easier to cast, and we can now easily support multiple copies in the main deck, greatly strengthening the deck against strategies that can win without having to deal damage, i.e. Grindstone, Academy Ruins [3] and Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

[1] Using Vial to make a Tidehollow on an opponent’s draw step allows you to deny the opponent their top deck for a turn.
[2] Put Tidehollow’s ability on the stack, then sacrifice him to Valley to permanently exile a card from your opponent’s hand.
[3] The presence of Academy Ruins in 38-Land allows them to easily deck the Life player.

As many of the true innovators out there know, making drastic changes to a deck requires much time and effort; it’s not unusual for the theory behind certain card choices and strategies to prove itself invalid. Nevertheless, it’s important to learn as much as possible for such experiments. In the case with Life, we did not immediately think that Black was a stronger choice than Blue, rather it was the product of a failed experiment.

Due to the popularity of those troublesome strategies mentioned above, myself and some non-local players [4] decided it may be worthwhile to combine Life with Cephalid Breakfast [5], adding to the deck’s flexibility, while also adding a possible turn 2 nut-draw kill. This is exactly the same sort of reasoning used recently by Yurchick’s GP Oakland 2nd-place Thopter-Depths, and as far back as Kai Budde’s Oath of Trix, which combined the aggro-stomping Oath of Druids engine with the popular Illusions-Donate kill. As it turned out, two problems plagued our hybrid deck. First, the presence of Dread Return, Sutured Ghoul, 3x Narcomoeba, Dragon’s Breath and Lord of Extinction made the deck mulligan at least 80% more often. In many testing sessions, I’d be ecstatic to only mulligan to six, but even then, those hands would commonly include a Narcomoeba or the like, effectively making them five-card hands. Second, many games you’d be forced to choose whether to go for the cephalid kill or infinite life. The two are completely mutually-exclusive since the using the cephalid reduces your library to only a few cards at most. If the opponent had a Sensei’s Divining Top in play, there was some probability that there is a Swords to Plowshares just waiting on top of the library for the Ghoul to hit play, complicating the decision to some degree.

[4] Doug Azzano, in particular.
[5] The combo involves targetting Cephalid Illusionist a large number of times with Shuko, or Nomads en-Kor to deck oneself. Several Narcomoebas come into play, which are sacrificed to Dread Return targetting a very large Sutured Ghoul (removing Lord of Extinction or Terravore). Dragon’s Breath gives the Sutured Ghoul haste.
[6] Turn 1 Shuko or Nomads en-Kor, turn 2 Cephalid Illusionist.

Though we had a lot of problems with consistency, we found that a few of the matchups had vastly improved (at the expense of others). We were nearly beating Merfolk every game as we could determine the exact number of Stifles and FoW’s we needed to fight though before committing thanks to Cabal Therapy and Thoughtseize.

After giving up on Cephalid-Life, it became clear that we could strengthen some matchups by making the blue-for-black swap, while also slightly shoring up our weak manabase [7]. Here is the list:

Dark Life
4 Aether Vial
4 Shuko
3 Nomads en-Kor
3 Daru Spiritualist
3 Task Force
4 Thoughtseize
3 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Doran the Siege Tower
4 Eladamri’s Call
4 Living Wish

3 Diamond Valley
2 Starlit Sanctum
4 Windswept Heath
4 Marsh Flats
3 Horizon Canopy
2 Savannah
2 Bayou
2 Scrubland
3 Plains
1 Forest

Sideboard
1 Diamond Valley
1 Nomads en-Kor
1 Daru Spiritualist
1 Doran the Siege Tower
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Harmonic Sliver
1 Progenitus [8]
3 Nature’s Claim
3 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Gaea’s Blessing

[7] We were already playing a couple sources of black mana in the main deck for Doran and sideboarded cards.
[8] To prevent being decked. Build up to a full hand, then discard Progenitus whenever you draw it.

I was prepped and ready to run a very similar list in a local tournament, but I figured it’d be more exciting if I wrote about something new. I convinced Nolan Blackwelder to switch decks with me prior to the tournament so I could talk, instead, about his interesting concoction, Bomberman [9].

[9] Nolan lost in the top 8 with the Life list, though he was winning both games prior to receiving a game-loss, and the unfortunate mistake of forgetting to board in the Progenitus against Stax.

Here is the list I piloted.

UWr Bomberman
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Fire/Ice
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Trinket Mage
3 Auriok Salvagers
2 Intuition
1 Painter’s Servant
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Grindstone
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Pithing Needle

1 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins
1 Dust Bowl
4 Flooded Strand
3 Arid Mesa
4 Volcanic Island
4 Tundra
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Ancient Den

Sideboard
2 Shattering Spree
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Tormod’s Crypt
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Meddling Mage
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Painter’s Servant

I don’t agree with all the card choices, but I decided to play the deck as-is. With around twenty players, the tournament structure was annouced to be four rounds, with a cut to the top-eight. Here we go:

Round 1, Robert Cone (U/G Natural Order)
Robert started on the play, and after a mulligan, ran out a Llanowar Elf on an Elvish Spirit Guide (no land). I untapped and played a Swords to Plowshares, practically ending the game on the spot. Robert found a City of Brass on the next turn and played a Concordant Crossroads, and on the following turn played a Birds of Paradise before passing. I ran out a Trinket Mage fetching Lion’s Eye Diamond and beat in for two. Robert didn’t do much on his following turn before passing back, where I resolved an Auriok Salvagers and generated infinite mana with Lion’s Eye Diamond [10], before drawing my deck with an Aether Spellbomb and going for the kill with Pyrite.

[10] Sacrifice the Lion’s Eye Diamond for three mana, then return it to your hand with Salvagers for two. Replay, rinse, repeat.

I sideboarded in the extra Painter’s Servants, Engineered Explosives and 2x Meddling Mage for the Tormod’s Crypt, Pithing Needle and 4x Accumulated Knowledge. This time Robert led off with a turn one Verdant Catacombs and City of Brass before playing a Vexing Shusher, while I played a Painter’s Servant. Robert resolved a main phase Mystical Tutor fetching Natural Order, and passed back before I ran out a Trinket Mage, fetching Grindstone. Robert, untapped and went for his Progenitus, I played out my 4th land drop along with the Grindstone. Robert scooped immediately, though I actually tried to stop him to ask if he had a second Progenitus in his deck. He hadn’t realized at the time, but Grinding into a Progenitus with Painter’s Servant ends the game in a draw, as the Progenitus keeps replacing itself only to be hit by the Grindstone again, creating an infinite loop [11].

[11] This is only the case because Progenitus’s ability is a replacement effect. If it were a triggered ability, the game would continue leaving the player with only Progenitus in his library.

Round 2, Todd Palmer (Merfolk)
I played first, but Todd started with an Aether Vial before getting first blood by beating in with a Mutavault. I played a Trinket Mage fetching Engineered Explosives. Todd attacked again with the Mutavault, but I opted against blocking, and Todd Vial’d a Lord of Atlantis into play to add a point of damage, before adding a second Mutavault. I untapped and used Engineered Explosives to dispatch the Lord, before attacking with Trinket Mage. Todd stayed aggressive by sending both his Mutavaults, sending me to 11 life. A turn later, Todd came in again with both Vaults, and I decided to throw the Mage in front of one, but Todd Vial’d a Merrow Reejerey to pump his Vault. I attempted a Swords to Plowshares, but he has Force of Will, sending me to 8 life. On my following turn, I cycled an Aether Spellbomb, but didn’t have much action, with only a Swords to Plowshares, a Lion’s Eye Diamond and a bunch of lands, and had to send the turn back. Todd ran out a Jitte, and hooked up his Reejerey, but I send it to the farm, and dropped to 3 from the Vaults. He passed the turn back, and I was all dead-on-board, until… I peeked at the top card of my library… Auriok Salvagers. I ran him out, into Todd’s two card hand, but he had no Force of Will. The Lion’s Eye Diamond hit the board next, and Todd scooped it up.

I sideboarded out all the copies of AK, the Tormod’s Crypt and the Intuitions for 2 Red Elemental Blast, 2 Engineered Explosives, a Pyroblast and 2 Painter’s Servant.

In game two, Todd started out with a Silvergill Adept, followed by a Lord of Atlantis and got in for a few points before an Stp dispatched the Lord. An Engineered Explosives on two was met by Force of Will, and a Mutavault joined Todd’s team. A Red Blast took out the Adept and a Trinket Mage hit play, but a Jitte came online for Todd, and the game ended soon after.

In game three, Todd led off with Wasteland and Pithing Needle on Grindstone. I had a Pithing Needle of my own, but opted to hit up his Wastelands. A Standstill came down, which was met by my Force of Will. Todd ran out an Aether Vial and a second Standstill along with a Force for my Counterspell. We passed the turn back and forth several times, with Vial moving up to three counters, but without ever putting a guy into play. Finally, a Rejeerey hit play along with a Mutavault, and I was forced to break the Standstill with a Swords to Plowshares. I tried a Painter’s Servant but Todd had another Force of Will. A Dust Bowl hit play, and I was started taking out the Mutavaults, while using various removal on Todd’s remaining creatures. This went on for several turns before time was called, with the board being my Pithing Needle and Academy Ruins against Todd’s Aether Vial, Pithing Needle and three turned-off Wastelands. On turn one of the final five, Todd peeled a Tormod’s Crypt but I put the Servant on top with Ruins in response, and followed with a turn two Trinket Mage fetching Grindstone and played an Explosives on one (to deal with the Pithing Needle on Stone). Todd could only add a Reejerey to his army on turn three, while I had enough mana up to Grind him out of cards on the fourth, forcing him to deck on the final turn. Phew!

With only four rounds before the cut, I was safe to draw into the top eight.

Quarterfinals
Natalie Scott (Dredge)
With Natalie on the play, the first spell she attempted was a turn two Putrid Imp. I went for the Force of Will, hoping to lock her out of discard outlets, but she had a Careful Study, discarding a few dredgers. On the following turn, I was able to counter a Breakthrough, but the damage had been done, and within three turns I was facing down six Bridge from Below tokens and a Bloodghast. I managed to peel an Engineered Explosives (which I called ahead of time, as it was my only out), and put an end to the tokens, but was already down to three life. The Bloodghasts cleaned things up fairly quickly.

I cut a Fire/Ice, three Swords to Plowshares, the AK’s, Intuitions and the Pithing Needle for 4 Red Blasts, 2 Tormod’s Crypt, 1 Relic of Progenitus, 2 Meddling Mage and 2 Painter’s Servants.

I elected to play, but my opening seven was just a bunch of Counterspells, Salvagers and lands. Without a winning gameplan here [12] I sent it back and received a similar six. The five wasn’t much better, and finally I wound up keeping the following four: Tormod’s Crypt, Red Blast, Painter’s Servant and Counterspell. Notice the lack of lands. Natalie came out the gates with a Pithing Needle on Crypt, followed by a turn two Tireless Tribe pitching Golgari-Grave Troll. She managed to dredge for three turns, without card drawing, her draw wasn’t very explosive. Not to mention, she didn’t hit a single Narcomoeba and only a single Bridge from Below. A Therapy came down, and missed on Trinket Mage. Finally, I peeled a second land, and ran out my Painter’s Servant naming blue. Natalie, still not hitting much action on her Dredges, continued to dig before passing back the turn, not realizing that her Pithing Needle was about to succumb to my Red Blast. And with that, the Red Blast knocked off the Needle and the Crypt took out her bin. A pair of Fire/Ices locked the land-light dredge deck out of blue mana for a couple turns before a Meddling Mage shut off Dread Return entirely. Natalie finally was able to hit a few Narcomoebas a few turns later, but it was too late. A Trinket Mage found Grindstone, and Natalie entered her scoop phase.

[12] I need to be able to lock her out of discard outlets, or have access to an early Tormod’s Crypt.

Being on the draw makes Counterspell much worse, so I cut two copies for a pair of Intuitions.

After such an epic game two, game three was quite anti-climactic. Natalie started with a Putrid Imp, to which I answered with a Tormod’s Crypt and Relic of Progenitus. Natalie was in no position to try to dredge and was forced to just hardcast a bunch of crappy guys. Between a pair of Trinket Mages and seven self-inflicted damage points from a Coliseum and City of Brass, the game ended in a hurry.

Semifinals
Carrena (Stax)
I kept my opening hand, with a Painter’s Servant, Trinket Mage, Force of Will, Intuition and three lands, and was pretty sure this game would be easy. That was, until Carrena resolved a Trinisphere on turn two. I figured that since I was going for the Grindstone kill, I should save my FoW for something more important, like Armageddon. That was until I realized that I couldn’t cast Force without paying three mana! On the following turn, I burned the FoW on morphed Exalted Angel, as I simply didn’t have anything better to do. When I tapped down for a Trinket Mage on the following turn, Armageddon hit the stack, my lands hit the bin, and I packed it up.

I boarded out the narrow removal spells (StP and Fire/Ice) along with two Intuition and a Tormod’s Crypt for Relic of Progenitus, 2 Shattering Spree, the pair of Painter’s Servants, 2 Meddling Mages and 2 Engineered Explosives.

We played land-go for a few turns before Carrena attempted a Crucible of Worlds, which was met by Force of Will (as she had Wasteland). A turn later, she tried a Trinisphere, which resolved, but was met by my Shattering Spree. Unfortunately, this left me tapped out, giving Carrena an opening to resolve Choke. Within a few turns, Carrena added a Smokestack, and fairly soon I was completely out of land. I started to build back, and was able to resolve a Painter’s Servant, and could Trinket Mage for a Grindstone as soon as I drew a mountain to Red Blast the Choke. Unfortunately, Carrena found an Armageddon before I could pull that off, ending my presence in the top eight.

3-1

After playing in the short tournament, I feel like I got a pretty good feel of what the deck wants to do, and how to play it fairly well. I noticed that it typically felt it was easier to go for the Painter’s Grindstone kill than Salvagers combo, particular post-board, although on paper it seems that the latter should be easier to set up.

Here are a few comments on the deck:
1. The Intuition/Accumulated Knowledge engine felt especially bad, as one doesn’t typically have that kind of time to invest, and drawing three cards is not necessarily better than using the Intuition as a tutor. Honestly though, if I was able, I almost always pitched AK or Intuition to Force of Will when given the opportunity. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong, but I don’t really think so.
2. I was very unhappy with the Tolaria West. I think it makes more sense if the deck had Pact of Negation. As is, I never found myself in a situation when I would rather transmute for a spell, than just play a land. That could also just mean that the deck is too land light.
3. The lack of Plateau put me in several situations where I had to choose between having access to red or white mana. The presence of Wasteland in the format, makes this come up more often than one might think.
4. Thirst for Knowledge seems very good in a deck with this many artifacts, particularly since most of those artifacts don’t mind being deposited directly into the graveyard.
5. Though Meddling Mage is a nice trick out of the sideboard, I think Counterbalance would be even stronger, and has the obvious synergy with the fetchable Sensei’s Divining Top.
6. There isn’t enough red mana in the deck to support Shattering Spree and I’m not sure if there is enough board space to worry about blowing up artifacts in a metagame that isn’t heavily shifted towards Stax.

And an updated list,

UWr Bomberman
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Fire/Ice
3 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Trinket Mage
3 Auriok Salvagers
2 Intuition
1 Painter’s Servant
1 Lion’s Eye Diamond
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
1 Aether Spellbomb
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Sensei’s Divining Top
1 Grindstone
1 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Pithing Needle

2 Tolaria West
1 Academy Ruins
1 Wasteland
4 Flooded Strand
3 Arid Mesa
3 Volcanic Island
3 Tundra
2 Plateau
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Ancient Den

Sideboard
3 Tormod’s Crypt
1 Relic of Progenitus
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Counterbalance
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Pyroblast
2 Painter’s Servant

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to leave me some nice comments!

Keith McLaughlin

Everyone going to an event, whether locals, regionals, or a Shonen Jump Championship, has to decide what deck to play. Some people might have very limited options, making their choice easy. Others may already have a deck in mind that’s been doing very well for them. I am in neither of these groups of people.

I have the mentality that there’s always a “correct” deck to play for every tournament; some deck that will naturally have a much better chance of winning than any other deck. This is the attitude that a lot of Magic: The Gathering players have when preparing for a big event such as a Pro Tour. My perspective of Yu-Gi-Oh! haas been affected by playing Magic and vice-versa. The challenge set before me was to solve the puzzle. What was the deck to play for SJC Nashville?

When my friends heard that I was going to Nashville (also known as “SJC Gaylord”), their first question was, “Are you playing Gadgets or Lightsworn?” Of course I told them that I hadn’t decided what I was playing yet, and was still considering all of my available options. I found the question that they asked was amusing though. It’s as if they viewed Gadgets and Lightsworn as the only possible decks that I could do well with.

Why would people assume that I would play Lightsworn? I think this was partly due to the article that I wrote a few weeks ago on CrowSworn.The other reason was that Lightsworn is the most popular deck and considered by most people to be the “best” deck. Lightsworn is clearly the deck to beat in this meta. If your deck consistently loses to Lightsworn, you should disregard it as a viable deck for any high-level event.

Why isn’t everyone running Lightsworn? It has no bad matchups for game 1, and if you have a good sidedeck, you should win games 2 and 3. There’s one small factor that’s turning away players from using Lightsworn…

“I would be running Lightsworn for sure if the mirror match didn’t exist.”

This was a quote from a brief conversation that I had with a player who top16ed SJC Orlando with a non-Lightsworn deck. (Note: I don’t use any names in my articles because I feel it’s rude to use people’s names without getting their permission first. That’s also why the phrase “one of my friends” will come up a lot in my articles.) From the conversations that I’ve had with good players,  the mirror match seems to be the most common reason for not running Lightsworn.

Obviously, every deck has the possibility of a mirror match. Many of the pro players that I’ve talked to have no problem playing Zombie mirrors or Blackwing mirrors. What makes Lightsworn so special? While there is always some skill involved in any matchup, the Lightsworn mirror match is almost entirely luck. No matter how you build your Lightsworn deck, you’re not going to get anything much better than a 50% winning percentage (even with a solid sidedeck). At a 10-round Shonen Jump Championship, it’s not uncommon for four of your matches to be against Lightsworn. If you can only win 50% of those matches, this has you losing two matches and most likely placing outside the top16.

On the other hand, other mirror matches are more skill based. For example, I have been playing Zombies for the past two weeks and have been winning about 75% of my mirror matches. Zombies, if built properly, have a good chance at beating Lightsworn while being able to beat the Zombie mirror at the same time. Unfortunately, the downside to Zombies is that the match against Gladiator Beasts is nearly unwinnable, and they can have a difficult time beating Blackwings as well.

What I was looking for is the deck that “beats everything”. That deck would be Lightsworn, but Lightsworn doesn’t beat Lightsworn. If you want to win the Lightsworn match, you need to either get lucky and summon a lot of Judgment Dragons or just hope that the person sitting on the other side of the table is a horrible player. You can’t rely on either of those happening at a Shonen Jump Championship.

That leaves the other deck that everyone was assuming that I would play: Gadgets. Gadgets are the deck I’m known for playing, and the deck that’s given me the best placings in premier events for my entire Yu-Gi-Oh! career. Of the eight regionals that I’ve top8ed, five of these were with Gadgets. However, don’t let the statistics lie to you. The first five regionals that I top8ed were all with Gadgets, while the last three were all with a non-Gadget deck. I was playing Gadgets non-stop ever since their release, but at some point I veered away from the archetype.

It seemed appropriate that SJC Orlando would mark my return with Gadgets. It was the start of a new format, and everyone was expecting the top tier decks to be Lightsworn and Gladiator Beasts. I didn’t have any of the cards for Lightsworn and I didn’t like Gladiator Beasts in this format. My plan for this event was simple:

1. Play Gadgets

2. Maindeck three Banisher of Radiance

3. Beat Lightsworn

4. Maindeck three Royal Oppression

5. Beat Gladiator Beasts

6. ???

7. PROFIT!

My plan worked pretty well. Before the event, I played against Lightsworn players for cards four times, and won 3/4 times. At the event, I beat Lightsworn four times. I lost one match to Lightsworn, partially due to getting a game 1 loss for a decklist error. My other loss was to Skill Drain Zombies, a deck that I was somewhat unprepared for. I beat Gladiator Beasts twice, including one in a feature match. I came in 18^th place, nearly top16ing with a deck that many players had thought was not on par with Lightsworn and Gladiator Beasts.

It was expected that I would play the deck for SJC Columbus, the next SJC that I was attending. After suffering a humiliating 0-2 drop, I got frustrated and decided that I was going to play other decks. I won a small win-a-mat event with Blackwings, and played those for awhile locally. While Absolute Zero had a lot of hype, I tested the deck rigorously. After I determined that the deck wasn’t as good as I had thought, I traded it for a Lightsworn deck. I did well at several locals with Blackwings, Lightsworn, and Zombies.

I’m not going to lie; I was doing everything in my power to not play Gadgets at SJC Nashville. Ever since SJC Columbus, I’d been testing everything except Gadgets. I’d decided that Gadgets would last on my list of options. I would only play the deck if none of the top tier decks tested well for me. Well, none of the top tier decks did test well for me, or at least not as well as I would’ve liked. I had a bad day at SJC Columbus with Gadgets, but they’ve done well at every other event I’ve taken them to. They even won one of The Game Academy’s $500 Cash Tournaments.

I think sometimes you just have to play whatever you feel is the best deck and accept that anything can happen. I might misplay horribly at SJC Nashville and miss out on a top16 as a result. I might draw gross hands and not top as a result. I might play against a deck that flat out beats mine. I might lose matches in time, or to a topdecked Brain Control. Things might not go my way, or the opposite might happen. However, I feel that my Gadget deck will give me the best chance at winning SJC Nashville, regardless of how well I actually do.

I could go on to explain the decklist that I’m playing and why I’ve made certain card choices. The important thing is what deck I decided to play, not what 70 cards (40 maindeck + 15 extra deck + 15 sidedeck) are included. I feel that Gadgets are the best deck for me to play at SJC Nashville, but not necessarily everyone else. I almost never misplay with Gadgets when I’m focused. Gadgets have no unwinnable matchups in this format, so I think I have a realistic chance at top16ing SJC Nashville.

Fear The Oppression 

I always felt like I never got to fully enjoy the September 2008 format, often called the TeleDAD format (named after the deck to beat, TeleDAD, that played multiple copies Emergency Teleport and Dark Armed Dragon). Many of the best players in the game often refer to the TeleDAD format as “one of the most skillful formats of all time.” I’m not sure whether I agree with that title, but I think it’s one of the most important formats that we can learn from.

 What’s so special about that format? It happened to be the first format that synchro monsters were legal. At first, some doubted the viability of synchros, but they took over the game very quickly. Some synchros, such as Stardust Dragon, had the ability to lockdown games by themselves. Due to the speed of Emergency Teleport comboed with the quick and easy synchro material Destiny Hero – Malicious, the deck had the ability to power out multiple synchro monsters extremely early on. However, we have an even more important lesson to learn than the power of synchros.

 The reason I say that I was never fully able to enjoy this format is the fact that I was never to obtain the top deck myself. While all the best players in the game were trying to figure out how to perfect what was clearly the strongest deck of the format, I was trying to throw together something that wouldn’t get smashed to pieces by it. This made my best option anti-meta. TeleDAD’s gameplan was all about special summoning, so I figured that a deck based around stopping special summons would be a good choice.

 My main anti-meta card of choice was Royal Oppression. As long as it remained on the field, it insured that a TeleDAD deck could not win. Anti-meta decks like mine that played Royal Oppression didn’t special summon at all, so the card had no downsides. The idea here was that an early game Royal Oppression would stop the TeleDAD player from doing anything. Once they were locked down, I could start beating their face in while they were trying to figure out how to recover. This use of Royal Oppression wasn’t new; this was a concept that had been employed by anti-meta decks for awhile.

The TeleDAD format started off somewhat diverse, with Gladiator Beasts, Lightsworn, and a few other decks being solid contendors. However, the format quickly became more streamlined. Other decks were pushed aside in favor of the deck with the most raw power and consistentcy: TeleDAD. The top players in the game eventually realized that they were in a format defined by beating the mirror match. Everyone was searching for the best way to beat the mirror. After weeks of searching, some players had found the answer: Royal Oppression.

It was hard for many players (including myself) to realize how amazing this card was in the TeleDAD mirror match. How could a deck effectively play this card when your deck and your opponent’s deck have an equal amount of special summons? Why run a card that completely conflicts with your deck’s strategy? The theory was simple:

 1. Special summon a lot of monsters

2. Set Royal Oppression

3. Your opponent will attempt to special summon

4. Activate Royal Oppression

5. ???

6. PROFIT!

 Royal Oppression was essentially a “prevent your opponent from making a comeback” card. All you had to do was get a favorable field position and set Royal Oppression. This use of Royal Oppression was completely new and innovative. It forever affected the way people viewed the card. Royal Oppression no longer had the label “for anti-meta decks only”.

 Let’s flash forward to this format, specifically to The Game Academy’s second $500 Cash Tournament. The Game Academy always has coverage of their big tournament, which is cool. One thing that interested me was how they asked players “What’s the best deck/card this format?” and made a video out of it.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntkql2811JM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl7FZNW3oHw

 The responses to these questions were very typical. For best deck, the answers were Lightsworn, Lightsworn, and Lightsworn. For best card, the answers were Judgment Dragon, Judgment Dragon, and Judgment Dragon. If you pay close attention, you might notice some redhead kid say “Royal Oppression” in the second video.

I don’t blame these people for saying that Judgment Dragon was the best card of the format. Judgment Dragon can single-handedly win games; it’s obviously one of the most powerful cards available. However, Royal Oppression can also win games, but in a different way that Judgment Dragon does.

 The top decks of the format are undisputedly Lightsworn, Blackwings, Zombies, and Absolute Zero. Each one of these decks can play Royal Oppression. The fact that Royal Oppression can be played in virtually any deck this format is what makes it a better card overall than Judgment Dragon. In fact, the winner of the last Shonen Jump Championship played a Lightsworn deck with one copy of Royal Oppression maindecked. Since this tournament, Royal Oppression has seen a rise in popularity as a 1-of. It can severly disrupt an opponent who’s not expecting it.

 I’ve been a big fan of Royal Oppression throughout his format. I started off playing Royal Oppression in the form of Gadgets (the deck that I’m “known” for playing).  After a bad week at SJC Columbus with Gadgets, I switched over to Blackwings, also playing Royal Oppression. Royal Oppression has been a staple in Blackwings this format, often played in twos. Shura the Blue Flame and Vayu the Emblem of Honor can dodge Royal Oppression due to various rulings. Even Blizzard the Far North can work around a Royal Oppression if you chain to its effect with the effect of Black Whirlwind.

 Zombies have recently added Royal Oppression to their arsenal as a tech card for the mirror, similar to the way that TeleDAD did a year ago. Most builds of Zombies seem to be playing only a single copy, but I’ve seen several builds playing doubles (including my build of Zombies, which you may get to see later). Many players have taken advantage of the synergy between Tragoedia and Royal Oppression, focusing more on stopping the opponent from OTKing rather than going for the OTK themselves.

 To be completely honest, I can’t find a single deck this format that has an excuse to not play Royal Oppression, whether it’s in the maindeck or sidedeck. If you haven’t thought about playing Royal Oppression, I suggest you start doing so. If you’re not thinking about how to include Royal Oppression in your pile of cards, you should at least be thinking about how to beat it. Whether you like it or not, you’re going to run into it eventually.

Revising Lightsworn – January 30^th was the first regional to be held in Florida in nearly five months. Many players were there just to get their national invitation. Others entered the event to test for the upcoming Shonen Jump Championship in Nashville, Tennessee, while others were motivated purely by the promise of an X-Saber mat to the players good enough to finish in the top8.

A lot of people asked me what deck I played at the regional or what my record was. The answer is that I choose to judge at this regional. It was one of those things that I’d never done before, and I wanted to see what it was like. As I wrote on the comments form, “It was tiring and stressful, but rewarding.” However, I can tell you what deck I would have played at the regional if I had entered the event. I built a deck before the regional in the unlikely event that they didn’t want me to judge the event anymore.

After I arrived at the venue and confirmed that I was still judging, I had to lend out all of my available decks to my friends (Yes, this was a requirement). These consisted of Gadgets, Blackwings, and Lightsworn. I’d given up on Blackwings as a viable decktype; I had a build that I saw online about three weeks ago that maindecked two Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer. I hadn’t changed my gadget deck at all since it got 1^st place at The Game Academy’s $500 Cash Tournament.

I lent one of my friends my latest build of Lightsworn, the deck that I had been messing around with since Charge of the Light Brigade and Honest were reprinted. I decided that Chaos Sorcerer was way too good not to play in Lightsworn, but I didn’t like any of the “Twilight” versions that I’d seen lately. I decided to build one of my own that would better suit my playstyle.

Too good not to play.

When I showed my deck to the friend that I was lending it to, he quickly looked at the deck and determined that he didn’t like it. I had various judging duties to take care of, so I didn’t really have time to explain my card choices. He decided to change it to a more standard build of Lightsworn and took out my favorite tech card, saying he would side it instead. I replied with, “Yeah, I was siding them at first too, but then I realized I was bringing them in every game and said ‘wait a minute!’ It beats Zombies and the [Lightsworn] mirror.”

At the end of the day, he’d finished 6-2 and landed in 17^th place, which is a pretty respectable record. However, he essentially admitted that I was right about my tech choice when he admitted that he had sided it in every game.

Before I reveal my tech, I want to explain some of issues that I have with the most popular version of Twilight, often called French Twilight, that Vincent Ralambomiadana used to win SJC Columbus. One of the first things I look at when viewing a decklist is the monster/spell/trap ratio. I don’t like the fact that 70% of his decklist consists of monsters. I just don’t like getting stuck with all-monster hands in any deck. I think his deck was a good choice for the event that he won, but I think the deck needs to be modified for future events.

I understand why most Twilight decks are playing so many monsters. Once you add your usual suspects for Lightsworn monsters, Dark Armed and Chaos Sorcerer for the twilight component, and dark monsters you already have at least 26 monsters. I had a great idea to solve this issue. How about if we cut the dark monsters like Tragoedia for a dark monster that’s actually a trap? Wait… what?

New ruling: D.D. Crow is now a trap (because Admiral Ackbar said so).

As you may be aware, D.D. Crow almost never touches the field. It functions more like a trap you can activate straight from your hand instead of setting it (which in reality makes it better than a trap). However, for the purposes of a card like Chaos Sorcerer, it’s a dark monster. A card like D.D. Crow is just what I needed for this deck. It keeps my monster count low, and has the anti-meta flavor that I always love.

As an anti-meta card, I like D.D. Crow a lot more than Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer in Lightsworn for several reasons. The main one is that it wastes your normal summon, which you normally want to use to summon a Lightsworn monster such as Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner or Celestia, Lightsworn Angel. Also, inflicting battle damage with a monster like Kycoo is not as easy as it sounds. It can be stopped dead in its tracks with a trap like Bottomless Trap Hole or Mirror Force. You also cannot inflict damage if your opponent has a wall of defense position monsters. On the other hand, D.D. Crow is unstoppable by anything besides Divine Wrath or something similar. It’s a great way to surprise the Lightsworn player who tries to get back Judgment Dragon with a card like Monster Reincarnation or the Zombie player who tries to set up combos with Mezuki.

There are a few other unusual elements of my deck as well. Take a look for yourself. I’ve titled the deck CrowSworn because it’s the most notable card, and it’s also a catchy name.

Monsters: 25 (really 23)

[2] Judgment Dragon

[2] Celestia, Lightsworn Angel

[3] Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner

[1] Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior

[1] Ehren, Lightsworn Monk

[2] Lyla, Lightsworn Sorceress

[1] Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter

[2] Wulf, Lightsworn Beast

[3] Necro Gardna

[3] Honest

[2] Chaos Sorcerer

[1] Gorz, Emissary of Darkness

[2] D.D. Crow

Spells: 11

[3] Charge of the Light Brigade

[3] Solar Recharge

[2] Gold Sarcophagus

[1] Heavy Storm

[1] Mystical Space Typhoon

[1] My Body as a Shield

Traps: 4 (really 6)

[2] Bottomless Trap Hole

[2] Beckoning Light

Sidedeck: 15

[2] Waboku

[2] Royal Decree

[2] Dust Tornado

[1] Aurkus, Lightsworn Druid

[1] Phantom of Chaos

[2] Lightning Vortex

[1] Breaker the Magical Warrior

[1] My Body as a Shield

[1] Shiny Black “C”

[1] Nobleman of Crossout

[1] Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer

As you may notice, there is no Plaguespreader Zombie found in the deck. The reason for this is that I have a lot of respect for Zombies, more so than the average Lightsworn player. Milling a Plaguespreader Zombie in the end phase against Zombies can spell doom (see what I did there?). The Zombie player can take it with his/her Zombie Master and Doomkaiser Dragon and synchro a lot. When a Zombie player makes a lot of synchros in one turn, it means you lose.

If you mill me against Zombies, you lose.

As you can see, no extra deck is listed. It’s impossible for this deck to synchro (bar your opponent Creature Swapping you a tuner). Personally, I do have an extra deck for this in real life just in case I run into some weird situation where I do happen to obtain a tuner. However, you can choose not to run an extra deck for mind games. Sitting down to play your opponent and telling them you don’t have an extra deck can have some interesting effects. Whether you do that or not is your choice.

I’m also not maindecking Aurkus, Lightsworn Druid because I find it to be useless in the Zombie and Absolute Zero matchups. These decks have very few cards that target, only the staple spell Brain Control and monster effects like Caius the Shadow Monarch and Brionac, Dragon of the Ice Barrier. I feel there are not enough targeting cards in the format to warrant a maindeck inclusion. However, I do I have it sidedecked for the Lightsworn mirror, Blackwings, and Gladiator Beasts.

On the other hand, I am maindecking Ehren, Lightsworn Monk, a card that often doesn’t see play in Twilight builds. This card is crucial in the Zombie matchup (although its effect is practically useless in the Lightsworn mirror). Anything that the Zombie player sets is going to get wrecked by Ehren: Mystic Tomato, Pyrmamid Turtle, and Goblin Zombie. I find the early advantage that Ehren gives to be very helpful in this matchup. It’s also useful in the Absolute Zero matchup, often sending back Mystic Tomato or Sangan. Even against Blackwings it has its occasional use of sending back a set Vayu, Blackwing the Emblem of Honor into the deck.

The spells are fairly standard; the only card I would like to talk about is My Body as a Shield. This card is amazing and should be considered a staple in Lightsworn. The card has been discussed recently because it can negate the effect of the deadly Elemental Hero Absolute Zero. However, more importantly it negates Judgment Dragon and Celestia, Lightsworn Angel, two of the strongest cards in a Lightsworn deck. It also negates Icarus Attack, which is considered by many to be the best card in a Blackwing deck (next to Black Whirlwind). And of course we all know that it negates Mirror Force and Torrential Tribute (which have been seeing play since… forever). You see where I’m going with this? It essentially negates the best cards in every deck. However, it’s not quite as good against Zombies, so I usually side it out against them.

I’d also like to explain how My Body as a Shield works against Royal Oppression for those who don’t know. If Royal Oppression is negating a card that special summons itself (such as Judgment Dragon, Chaos Sorcerer, or any synchro) you cannot use My Body as a Shield in response since the monster is not on the field yet. One of the people I know calls it the “limbo” zone; it’s technically not on the field or in the hand. However, if you’re activating the effect of a card like Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner or Zombie Master, since the card is on the field, you may use My Body as a Shield if your opponent choose to activate Royal Oppression.

It’s important to know this for strategical purposes. What I often do is use Lumina to “bait” Royal Oppression while holding a My Body as a Shield. That way it’s safe to drop a Judgment Dragon later. Being able to read Royal Oppression is very important, as you have a number of ways to destroy it if you need to.

There are only a few traps in this deck. The two Beckoning Lights are considered staples in a Lightsworn deck. I don’t think a third Beckoning Light or a 1-of Monster Reincarnation is necessary. Two Bottomless Trap Holes are being played because I like the fact that they’re live in every matchup. I like them against Blackwings, an overplayed deck in my meta, because it stops them from searching with Black Whirlwind (assuming the monster that was summoned had at least 1500 attack, which it usually does). It’s also great against the Lightsworn monster, stopping a Lumina into Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior play. Bottomless is also good against Judgment Dragon, since you know your opponent won’t be able to get it back to his/her hand later.

I’m not playing Mirror Force or Torrential Tribute, which might surprise some people. These “staple traps” are not necessary in a Lightsworn deck. Mirror Force is easily destroyed in the current metagame, and Torrential Tribute doesn’t help when your field is bigger than your opponent’s. Lightsworn like to swarm the field, and neither of these cards when you’re doing that.

I would like to talk about the sidedeck, although it’s not set in stone by any means. In Lightsworn, the sidedeck actually has two functions. The first is countering your opponent’s sidedeck.

[2] Dust Tornado

[2] Royal Decree

[1] Breaker the Magical Warrior

[1] Phantom of Chaos

Whether you side in Dust Tornado, Royal Decree, or both depends on your opponent’s deck. If your opponent is running something very trap heavy, such as Blackwings, I usually bring in Royal Decree. If it’s something with less traps, like Zombies or Absolute Zero, I usually find myself putting in Dust Tornado instead. If I’m playing against something anti-meta I bring in both because you want as much spell/trap removal as possible. Breaker the Magical Warrior and Phantom of Chaos are almost always brought in. They’re the best ways to get around a Light-Imprisoning Mirror.

Next, you have the cards that are specifically sided for the Lightsworn mirror match: Wabokus and Lightning Vortexes. Not only do these cards have synergy together, but they are also good by themselves against Lightsworn. A well-timed Waboku can stop you from getting OTKed and possibly even make your opponent deckout. Lightning Vortex is good at clearly the swarms that Lightsworn and known for getting. Lightning Vortex is a great answer to a first turn Lumina into a Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior (often milling a Wulf, Lightsworn Beast). Pitching a Necro Gardna with the Vortex makes it even better.

Kycoo the Ghost Destroyer is a random 1-of that’s sided in for both the Lightsworn mirror and Zombies. If you can get its effect off it’s great, but not quite good enough for me to want to bring in multiples. In fact I may end up cutting it if I can find something that serves a better purpose.

Shiny Black “C” is mainly against Zombies, but it can also be brought in against any deck that heavily relies on synchros. Once you get Shiny Black “C” into the grave, it becomes very hard for the Zombie player to OTK you, as that typically involves playing multiple synchros. Nobleman of Crossout is directed at Zombies as well. Eliminating set monsters is very important in that matchup.

My Body as a Shield is mainly in the side for the Lightsworn mirror. I find that whoever wins the mirror is often determined by who uses Judgment Dragon’s effect more, so negating its effect is obviously very helpful. I also bring it in against Blackwings because I feel that negating Icarus Attack is just that important.

That covers the side (Aurkus was previously discussed). Feel free to change the side and make it your own depending on your meta. Things that I would consider adding include Malevolent Catastrophe, Brain Control, and Thunder King Rai-Oh.

In testing so far the deck appears to have no bad matchups. In particular, I feel that people are overrating the Absolute Zero vs. Lightsworn matchup. I’ve been hearing some people saying that Absolute Zero should win every game. Absolute Zero itself is a Raigeki, which can obviously hurt Lightsworn. However, you can play around that. Just don’t overcommit to the field. If Lightsworn gets a fast hand, it’s hard for Absolute Zero to keep up with the pace. The earliest the deck can bring out Absolute Zero is turn 2 or 3, and by then the lightsworn player can have done a lot.

Another advantage that Absolute Zero has is the fact that the deck can bring out Ally of Justice Catastor as early in turn 1. This is just another reason why Chaos Sorcerer is good. Other outs include the obvious ones like Judgment Dragon and Celestia. You also have Bottomless Trap Hole and Ryko, Lightsworn Hunter. If you can manage to drop Gorz, Emissary of Darkness it gives you yet another answer.

I don’t want to go as far to say that the deck I’m featuring today is the best deck of the format. I certainly think there are other good options for a deck to take to a big event. I am attending SJC Nashville, and there are a lot of decks on my list to test. However, I would recommend that other competitive players put this deck, or one conceptually similar to it, on their list of decks to test. It may look unusual, but you might be surprised on how well it tests. Based on my testing so far, it has a strong mix of power and consistency.

Wednesday, January 27th – Allen Pennington takes us through his advanced Yu-Gi-Oh! strategy and shares tips on improving your Yu-Gi-Oh! game.

This was a classic matchup between Zombie and Lightsworn, a matchup I would consider to be even. Sometimes one player draws better that the other, but more often than not someone gets outplayed.

This was one of those cases.

The Zombie player had a great setup with his more control-oriented build. He had a Stardust Dragon, a Colossal Fighter, and a set Torrential Tribute. He was winning with 6300 lifepoints to his opponent’s 4400 and appeared to have established a good control of the game (the lightsworn player didn’t even have any Necro Gardnas in the grave). But this didn’t last for long. It was now the lightsworn player’s turn, and he did the only thing he could. He summoned normal Lumina, Lightsworn Summoner, discarded Wulf, Lightsworn Beast to bring it back, and put a card on the top of his deck to bring back Plaguespreader Zombie. The zombie player had no response, and he synchro’d for a Mist Wurm. He targeted all three of the Zombie player’s cards with Mist Wurm’s effect, prompting the Zombie player to activate Torrential Tribute, wiping the field.

It was topdeck mode for both players. The zombie player topdecked a Caius the Shadow Monarch (to go with his dead creature swap already in hand) and passed. The lightsworn player drew a Garoth, Lightsworn Warrior (his only card in hand), summoned it, attacked for 1850, and passed the turn. The zombie player ripped yet another Caius. Frustrated, he showed his hand to a spectator and said, “I only run two of those.” The lightsworn player drew a Necro Gardna, set it, hit for 1850 and passed. Finally, the Zombie player got a Spirit Reaper, something useful. He set it passed.

Next turn it was all over. The lightsworn player drew a Celestia, Lightsworn Angel, tributing Garoth to destroy Spirit Reaper, flipped Necro Gardna, and attacked for game. The zombie player complained about his opponent’s lucky draws. Had you watched this game, you might have thought that the Zombie player did all he could. But you would be wrong. Like the poor zombie player, you made the mistake of functional fixedness, a phenomenon that often prevents players from recognizing their in-game mistakes.

Specifically, go back to this play “prompting the Zombie player to activate Torrential Tribute, wiping the field.” What else could he have done? He could’ve let the Mist Wurm bounce the Torrential Tribute to his hand, and not wiped the field. However, this also would not have been a good play because if the lighsworn player did not summon another monster, he still would have lost. So what else could have done been done? Still can’t figure it out? I’ll give you a clue: it involves Stardust Dragon.

So maybe you figured it out. The Zombie player could have activated Torrential Tribute and then tributed Stardust Dragon to negate the Torrential Tribute, allowing Stardust Dragon to come back in the end phase (effectively saving his Stardust Dragon from its death). This would make any monster a viable topdeck (you could just Creature Swap it for the Mist Wurm), and in this case would’ve made those dead Monarchs live. He could tribute Stardust for Caius, remove Mist Wurm, attack for 2400, then next turn tribute for Caius again and attack for game.

Obviously, the zombie player could not have been psychic and predict that he was going to draw two Caius the Shadow Monarchs in a row, but that’s irrelevant. The fact is that tributing Stardust to negate Torrential Tribute would’ve given him much better odds to win the game. Any removal card, any monster, and Brain Control would’ve either won the game outright or turned it around in his favor. If it was that simple, why did both players and a group of spectators all not notice this costly misplay?

Remember when Stardust Dragon first came out it you realized why it was so good? It could negate many of your opponent’s important removal cards. Did you think it was good because you could use its effect in conjunction with Torrential Tribute to dodge a Mist Wurm bounce? Probably not. This is a perfect example of a psychological occurrence called functional fixedness: a cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used. Clearly, the best way to use Stardust Dragon in this game was not “traditional” by any means.

Overcoming functional fixedness is one of the many ways that good players become great players. They make the best play instead of the most obvious play.

Probably the most classic example of how the first pro players overcame functional fixedness was the play that’s now known as the “pro storm”. For many years, everyone played Heavy Storm the same way Harpie’s Feather Duster was played; whenever you wanted to clear your opponent’s on-field spells/traps, you plop down a Heavy Storm and clear them. A smart player would never set more than one spell/trap compared to his opponent (so if I had one set spell/trap it would be ok for you to set two, but not three). Eventually, clever players were able to figure out that by setting Heavy Storm, you could trick your opponent into letting you get a 2-for-1. Word of the pro storm soon spread, and some players no longer had an issue of functional fixedness regarding Heavy Storm (a smart player would now avoid setting more spells/traps than his opponent unless one of them was chainable).

Usually functional fixedness is an issue with newer players picking up a new deck. At first, they only learn the most common plays and can’t see the less obvious ones. However, this can become a problem with more experienced players as well. They go into an auto-pilot mode after they are confident that they know all of the ins and outs of a deck. When you’re in auto-pilot mode you’re less likely to consider all of your plays; you just do the first thing that comes to mind.

I’ve played against a lot of pro players throughout the years, and have tried to see what they all have in common. One of the major things is that they all play much slower than the average player. This might seem a bit shady, and I would argue that a handful are doing it to stall for time. However, I think the majority are doing it because they are trying to think of every possible play, consider them all, and then do whatever they feel is optimal.

There’s two parts to making a good play and not letting functional fixedness get the best of you. The first part is thinking about your plays, but the second is actually reading your cards, something that might seem obvious. There’s no way that you could’ve made the Stardust Dragon play if you hadn’t known that it could negate the effects of your own cards. The more card interactions you understand, the more likely you are to make the correct play in a given situation.

Another example of functional fixedness involves synchros once again. Black Rose Dragon is considered to be an extra deck staple. If your opponent heavily commits to the field, you can summon it to blow up everything. It’s very useful. However, many players have never actually read the card’s text. If they had, they would realize that it actually has another effect. By removing a plant monster in your grave, you can force one of your opponent’s monsters to attack position and bash it for 2400. This might sound like a situation that would rarely come up, but if you’re playing Mystic Tomato, it might happen more often than you might think. I know I’ve caught plenty of opponents off guard by activating Black Rose Dragon’s second effect. It often invokes surprised comments from my opponents, “Wait, it has another effect?”

There are nearly infinite examples of situations where making unorthodox plays can win games. Having your Lightsworn monsters suicide into your opponent’s bigger monsters can prevent you from decking out with your Lightsworn monsters’ effects. The concept of having your monsters kill themselves is a play that’s obvious to some but often escapes the less experienced players who have a naive mindset of “Why would I ever want my monsters to kill themselves?” Another situation where killing your own monsters can be beneficial is to accelerate into a Dark Armed Dragon. By having Mystic Tomato suicide into your opponent’s monster and searching another copy of itself (and keep repeating the process) you can go to having zero darks in your graveyard to having three.

The best thing you can do if you want to learn new plays and become better in general is to watch others play. Different people make different plays. You might watch someone else play and reach an epiphany. You’ll see a really good play and be able to add it to your bag of tricks for future games.

*Editor’s Note* – The Game Academy will host Legacy tournaments every Thursday; signups begin @ 6 PM and tournament entry is $7. All entry will be given back to top finishers in store credit to use towards anything in the store. Keith will always be in attendance, so if you have any questions or need deck advice don’t hesitate to ask! =)

I’ve been testing a little bit of Legacy lately, but as usual, I’ve decided to stick with my trusty Life deck for the time being. For those who aren’t in the know, the Life combo is a deck based which requires three pieces. The first is a Kor, such as Nomads en-Kor, Shaman en-Kor, Outrider en-Kor or whatever. You use the Kor to target Daru Spiritualist, Task Force or Angelic Protector an arbitrarily large number of times before sacrificing the Spiritualist/Force/Protector to a Worthy Cause, Starlit Sanctum (Spiritualist only), Condemn or Diamond Valley (Alternatively, Doran allows you to deal infinite damage with an unblocked Spiritualist/Force/Protector). Though three card combos that don’t outright win the game aren’t so hot, what makes this deck very strong is the redundancy. You have on the order of eight of each combo piece, along with Eladamri’s Call (which can fetch a Kor or Spiritualist) and Living Wish (which can get any piece).

The deck was played a billion years ago, but is mostly known during it’s time in Extended prior to the latest rotation, when the metagame shifted towards aggro decks, such as Red Deck Wins and Goblins. I wasn’t a big fan of the deck because of the popularity of the Mind’s Desire deck which won with Brain Freeze. A year or two later, everyone had forgotten about the Life deck. Doug Azzano, Jack Hutchings and myself were preparing for Grand Prix Philadelphia (I believe, 2005), which was Legacy. The most popular deck, by a large margin was Goblins. Other competitors were the Vault/Fusillade combo deck, Threshold and Solidarity (Reset/Brain Freeze). Life came to mind as being potentially being quite broken, just based on the volume of Goblin players at every event. This was before Doran was printed, so the best way to win after gaining infinite life, was by decking. Gaea’s Blessing was already going to be immensely helpful for the Solidarity matchup. After throwing together a list, we found that the only really weak matchup was against Time Vault/Flame Fusillade. I figured that deck wouldn’t be as popular as Time Vault was over $100 at the time.

(For a tournament report from that Grand Prix, search for my article on StarCityGames.com or check my website kmclaugh.myweb.usf.edu.)

Our gambit paid off, as I faced a total of seven Goblin players (going 7-0 matches), while never playing against a Time Vault the entire GP, while finishing 15th and earning an invite to Pro Tour Honolulu.

Since then, I’ve stuck with the deck for two more events, finishing in the top 8 of an 80-man Legacy event at Pro Tour Atlanta (in 2005, I believe) and then more recently splitting in the top 8 of a Grand Prix Tampa side event for a total of five dual lands and four fetch lands.

I’m not sure that Life is as strong as it was several years ago, as the other decks have become much more powerful, so I decided to give it a whirl in a local Legacy event in preparation for the Orlando 5K coming up in March. Here’s the list:

4 Aether Vial

3 Pithing Needle

3 Nomads en-Kor

4 Shaman en-Kor

3 Daru Spiritualist

2 Task Force

1 Doran, the Siege Tower

4 Meddling Mage

3 Condemn

4 Living Wish

3 Eladamri’s Call

3 Diamond Valley

2 Stalit Sanctum

1 Scrubland

1 Tropical Island

1 Tundra

3 Savannah

3 Horizon Canopy

3 Windswept Heath

1 Arid Mesa (I was short a Heath)

2 Marsh Flats

2 Flooded Strand

1 Forest

3 Plains

Sideboard:

3 Krosan Grip

1 Diamond Valley

1 Gaea’s Blessing

1 Doran, the Siege Tower

1 Task Force

1 Daru Spiritualist

1 Nomads en-Kor

3 Tormod’s Crypt

1 Pithing Needle

1 Tidehollow Sculler

1 Yixlid Jailer

Round 1 Dredge

Lost the die roll, and my opponent mulled to 5, which had me pumping the fist. He kicked off with a Gemstone Mine into a Cabal Therapy blindly naming Force of Will. He followed with a Careful Study on turn 2, but had no dredge outlet, and finally with a Breakthrough on turn 3. Meanwhile, I kicked off with a turn one Aether Vial, Meddling Mage’d Cabal Therapy on turn 2, and on turn 3 played Living Wish for Yixlid Jailer and Vialed him out. All but sending my opponent packing for game 2. As a sidenote, I avoided playing any Kors as I finished my opponent off with the Mage and Jailer, as I’m not typically fond of giving my opponents free information.

-3 Pithing Needle, -1 Task Force

+3 Tormod’s Crypt, +1 Yixlid Jailer

I brought in a Jailer, as Living Wish is the most common Therapy target, and it gives me some small probability of getting the nuts turn 2 Jailer. My opponent again mulled to five, while I kept six. He started off with land-go for a few turns, while I ran a Tormod’s Crypt on turn 1, followed by Daru Spiritualist and a Kor soon after. On turn four or five, my opponent still hadn’t significantly advanced his board position, and I was able to Condemn my Spiritualist for infinite life, sending him packing.

1-0

Round 2 – Jared Serrano – Reanimator

Game one, Jared had the nuts. He won the roll, and Entombed an Iona at the end of the my first turn (I played a Vial). A turn 2 exhumed Iona (naming white) blanked my two Condemn’s in hand. I wasn’t out of this game yet, as I had the Kor and Spiritualist that I could Vial out, but didn’t manage to get a Diamond Valley or Living Wish in time.

-3 Pithing Needle

+3 Tormod’s Crypt

Game two, I kicked off with a turn 1 Tormod’s Crypt and Aether Vial. Jared tried to set up for Reanimation with a Careful Study and Mystical Tutor for Intuition. Meanwhile, I Vial’d out a Nomad and Spiritualist. When Jared passed his third turn, I played an end-step Eladamri’s Call to fetch up Doran, and Vial’d him out for the next attack step.

Prior to game 3 Jared took forever to sideboard which drew a bit of suspicion from me. He kicked off the game with a Leyline of the Void, which was, at first, quite confusing. After realizing he was going to Helm of Obediance me out, I became pretty disappointed that the Pithing Needles were sitting in my sideboard. At the end of my first turn, Jared Mystical Tutor’d for Dark Ritual, and down came a turn 2 Helm. With no way of stopping his turn 3 kill, I scooped it up.

1-1

Round 3 – URB Combo/Control

My round three opponent had an interesting budget deck. It had no dual lands or other flashy cards, but ran both, the Painter Servant + Grindstone combo as well Thopter Foundry + Sword of the Meek, along with Remands, Brainstorm, Lightning Bolt (which we agreed should’ve been Red Elemental Blast), Trinket Mage and Duress.

Game one I ran out an Aether Vial, and made a Kor and Spiritualist, before it got Pithing Needle’d. Stuck on one land for several turns, I played my own Pithing Needle on Grindstone and ultimately drew a Condemn and was able to go infinite. My opponent had cluttered the board with a Vendilion Clique a Trinket Mage and Sower of Temptation, so I couldn’t get much damage in, but soon found an Eladamri’s Call for Doran. Unfortunately, I was still stuck on two lands, and my opponent eventually drew an Engineered Explosives to crack my Needles. On the following turn, he played out both, his Painter Servant and Grindstone and decked me.

-1 Condemn, -2 Meddling Mage

+2 Krosan Grip, +1 Gaea’s Blessing

In game two, I mulled to six keeping a hand with three lands and three Living Wish. My opponent started with a Cabal Therapy naming Daru Spiritualist and missing. I untapped and drew …… Another Living Wish! This was very scary, as my opponent is a single Trinket Mage away from Mind Twist’ing me. I played the first Wish for a Spiritualist. He had no Trinket Mage and I was able to attempt a second Living Wish, but he had Remand. On turn four, he still had no creature, and I was able to untap and play two of the remaining Living Wishes, for a Doran and a Nomads en-Kor. Two turns later we were shuffling up for game three.

In game three, both me and my opponent got slow draws. He kicked off with two Brainstorms (augmented by fetchlands) while I ran out a Meddling Mage on Trinket Mage, followed by a Shaman en-Kor and finally a Spiritualist. I attacked for several turns, then on turn six, my opponent tapped out to transmute a Muddle the Mixture for a Thopter Foundry, played a Sword of the Meek and Pithing Needle’d my Shaman en-Kor. With a Diamond Valley in play, I had the option to sacrifice the Spiritualist for infinite life prior to the Needle, but decided against it. Instead, I untapped and ripped a land off the top, to Living Wish for a Nomads en-Kor, and played a Doran with the help of my opponent’s Urborg (letting Diamond Valley tap for black), and went in for the kill.

2-1

Round 4 – Green Aggro

My round four opponent was playing a mono-green stompy deck with Berserk, Rancor, and a bunch of weenies along with Kavu Predator and Invigorate. This seems like an auto-win, as even an Kavu Predator isn’t very good against me, provided I am able to get two copies of Spiritualist/Task Force, the first to block, and the second to gain infinite life. After winning the roll, I opened up with the nut draw. Turn 1 Aether Vial, turn 2 Daru Spiritualist while using Vial to make a Nomads en-Kor, and a turn 3 Diamond Valley. My opponent opted to continue attacking (for no particular reason, but he likely had no outs, so who cares?), which gave me an opening to make a Task Force on the end step (with Vial), and attack with the team. When he declared no blocks on the Task Force, I used Eladamri’s Call to find Doran and used Vial for the win.

Game two was much of the same. My opponent mulled to six, and kept a sub-par hand, which only got worse. By turn four, I had infinite life, while he had two creatures in play, neither of which were Kavu Predator. From there Doran cleaned up.

3-1

This record was good enough to finish in second place. This would’ve been a first place finish, but Ross Chancey (playing my Merfolk deck minus a set of Aether Vials) decided to concede to Jared Serrano, to guarantee me a money-finish ($18 store credit). Turns out, had he not done that, we would’ve finished 1st and 2nd. Oops. Jared was a good sport about it and hooked Ross up with some dinner, so everyone was pretty satisfied.

—–

Before wrapping up, I just thought I’d talk a little more about Jared’s deck. Obviously reanimator has a really tough time winning through cards like Tormod’s Crypt, but Jared also plays Show and Tell. Now that card is admittedly very bad if your opponent is holding a Progenitus, but otherwise it’s pretty baller, even if your opponent puts a Dream Halls into play, since you’ll be getting Iona on blue. What that essentially does, is give your deck access to nut draws (Turn 1 Ritual, Entomb, Exhume/Reanimate, etc.), while also having a very strong backup plan. The following list is not Jared’s actual build, but is what I would run as a starting point for the deck.

4 Show and Tell

4 Exhume

4 Reanimate

4 Mystical Tutor

4 Dark Ritual

4 Iona, Shield of Emeria

1 Blazing Archon

4 Ponder

4 Careful Study

4 Force of Will

4 Thoughtseize

1 Intuition

1 Wipe Away

2 Verdant Catacombs

1 Bloodstained Mire

2 Marsh Flats

4 Polluted Delta

4 Underground Sea

3 Swamp

1 Island

I would imagine the matchup against Counter-Top-Balance is sketchy, and Merfolk appears to also be somewhat unfavorable, but this deck seems like it would have some serious game against pretty much anything else.

That’s all for this time. Feel free to hit me up with questions and comments.

Keith McLaughlin

kmclau@gmail.com

Friday, January 8th – In this first of a series of tournament reports Zach Efland takes us through his trials and tribulations ptqing on MTGO.

I’ve spent the last few weeks rigorously testing Scapeshift for the upcoming Extended PTQ season. Extended is always a wide-open field, filled with a variety of worthwhile decks to choose from. Personally, I’ve always gravitated towards combo decks in diverse fields. Combo decks tend to do the most unfair things, which means that variance will frequently reward you when your skill edge fails to do so. Everyone has lost to a topdecked Mind’s Desire or Dragonstorm, and the possibility of that occurrence is one of the primary incentives to go combo.

This particular Extended field favors combo decks. Two extremely good Zoo variants, a Burn deck, Affinity, Bant, and Doran make up the beatdown/midrange demographic. The only control decks are Faeries, Dark Depths, and Tezzerator. Combo decks are generally fast enough to beat creature decks, but typically fold up against efficient answers or counterspells. These particular control decks—excluding the Fae—all lack the fundamental base of counterspells that control has historically required. That makes a one-card-combo deck like Scapeshift a great choice.

Leading up to the first two MTGO PTQs, I played in several Daily and Premier Events, as well as countless 8-man Constructed queues. Couple that with the testing I put in alongside Justin “Hoss” Hostutler, and we figured out a few things about our deck. We determined that the Zoo and Burn matchups were quite good, and that we could sacrifice a few percentage points in each in order to swap Repeal for Into the Roil. This change gave us considerably more game against All-In Red, and was also stronger against Bant’s Gaddock Teeg and Meddling Mage. We also reworked our sideboard to accommodate what we believed would be the other popular decks. Here’s the list we played in the PTQ:

4 Coiling Oracle

4 Wood Elves

4 Sakura Tribe-Elder

2 Cryptic Command

4 Remand

4 Into the Roil

4 Peer Through Depths

4 Firespout

4 Scapeshift

3 Harrow

4 Steam Vents

4 Stomping Grounds

1 Breeding Pool

2 Misty Rainforest

4 Forest

2 Mountain

3 Island

1 Flooded Grove

2 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Sideboard

3 Negate

3 Kitchen Finks

2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

2 Fracturing Gust

2 Magma Jet

3 Ravenous Trap

Colin Powell once said: “Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter.” This will prove true as we walk through my PTQ experience.

Round 1: Team Allan Orca – Doran with Blue

Following a turn 1 Overgrown Tomb + Duress, turn 2 Hallowed Fountain, and turn 3 Doran, I deduced that this person was playing Christian Calcano’s 4-color Doran, which won the previous PTQ. I played out a few dorks, made some blocks to stay alive, and used Into the Roil to bounce his Meddling Mage on Scapeshift at end of turn, winning the game on turn 6.

Sideboarding: +2 Magma Jet, +3 Negate, -2 Cryptic, -1 Into the Roil, -1 Firespout, -1 Peer Through Depths.

This particular build of Doran can’t possibly kill me before I combo out, so I just need a variety of ways to kill Teeg and Mage in order to avoid getting locked out of the game. The Negate is for potential Cranial Extractions—it has to be brought in against any form of Rock, just in case. Game two went much like game one. He played a Meddling Mage naming Firespout and followed with a Gaddock Teeg. He had no other real offense, and Into the Roil showed its value over Repeal. I bounced the Teeg and won on turn 7.

2-0, 1-0

Round 2: Mizenhaur – Doran

In game one, my opponent played a Finks and a Goyf to start the beatdown. I Firespouted twice in one turn, killing Goyf and Finks at about 9 life. He did nothing on his following turn, while I drew Scapeshift off the top to win. My opponent coincidentally went AFK, and timed out of the round.

2-0, 2-0

Round 3: Super Morphling – Tezzeret Combo

I began game one with a Tribe-Elder, sacrificing it at end of turn. On turn 3, I played Wood Elves and another Tribe-Elder. On turn 4, I had 6 lands and Scapeshift, as I hadn’t drawn a land to win the game right there. On my opponent’s turn, he played a Chrome Mox and a Glen Elendra Archmage—that brought the game to a screeching halt. After a few turns of draw-go, he tapped down to only 2 blue and a Ghost Quarter untapped. I bounced the Archmage at end of turn, and he sacked to counter. I played Firespout for the air on my tun, and combo’d off. Once my lands came into play, I put all my Valakut triggers onto the stack. He Ghost Quartered one of my Mountains, and conceded once I searched for another basic one. Valakut only triggers if the 6th Mountain is coming into play, but it also checks upon resolution that there are 5 other Mountains in play. Be sure to leave those basics in the deck in order to avoid losing to this play!

Sideboarding: +2 Magma Jet, + 3 Negate, +2 Boseiju, -3 Harrow, -2 Cryptic, -1 Firespout, -1 Peer. Game two went very similarly, with me ramping early and him sticking an Archmage. Much like game one, I used two spells to get rid of the Archmage and won handily.

2-0, 3-0

A brief aside about the Tezzeret deck: while this deck is quite good, and I’m sure it will win tournaments this year . . . it is practically a bye for Scapeshift, even moreso than Zoo! Zoo can put down a reasonable clock, forcing you to have the win by turn 9 or so, once you’ve run out of chump blockers. Tezzeret, on the other hand, has no clock to speak of and only plays 1 copy of each win condition. Most versions I’ve seen play minimal counterspells, usually in the range of 2-3 Cryptics, 2-3 Mana Leaks, and maybe some Muddles or Archmages. Just wait until you can pay for the Leaks or Remand a Cryptic and pay for Leak. You can also just play multiple Scapeshifts in one turn, making it very hard to lose.

Round 4: Alexilegend – Dredge

This is one of the harder matchups for Scapeshift, as the first game is nigh-unwinnable. If you get a draw with a Tribe-Elder or two and a Remand, then it quickly becomes manageable. The problem is that hands like 3 lands, Oracle, Scapeshift, Peer, and Harrow are easy keeps and can’t beat an average Dredge draw in a million years. In the first game, he easily killed me on turn 4.

Sideboarding: +3 Negate, +3 Ravenous Trap, -2 Cryptic, -2 Peer.

His draw in game two was very awkward. It took him 3 Ideas Unbound to find a Dredger, giving me plenty of time. Once he began to go off, I Remanded all 3 Dread Returns to keep him from hasting me to death. He had 20 Zombies in play, but I simply untapped and combo’d.

Game three was actually a drawn-out affair, with neither of us capable of a combo finish. On turn 3, he Thoughseized me—I had a Scapeshift and Ravenous Trap in my hand. His graveyard had 2 Dread Returns, a Bridge, and 2 Dredgers, so I decided to Trap in response and let him take the Scapeshift. I only had 1 blue in play, so I couldn’t kick my Into the Roils—here, Repeal would have been superior. I began to fall behind against his 2 Bloodghasts, Sphinx of Lost Truths, and Narcomoeba beatdown. I found a second Firespout, which let me kill all his creatures. I had a Scapeshift in hand to win on my turn, assuming I drew a land and he didn’t. He drew the land, and I died to the Vampires.

1-2, 3-1

Round 5 – Watoo (Guillaume Wafo-Tapa) – U/b Teferi Control

Between rounds, I always replay random games. I just so happened to watch his match in Round 2, so I knew what he was playing. I also knew that this would be a hard match, as he had probably close to 20 counterspells. In game one, he countered my first Coiling Oracle but let the second resolve. I began playing beatdown and making land drops, but he had Teferi at the end of turn 5. I Remanded it, and he played it again at the end of turn 6. On my turn 7, I went for it with 2 Scapeshifts in hand, but he had Rewind followed by Spell Burst with buyback to lock me out of the game.

I had the perfect draw in game two: turn 2 Tribe-Elder, turn 3 Wood Elves and Boseiju, and on turn 4 I was prepared to play another Tribe-Elder and sack it, playing Scapeshift via Boseiju for the win thanks to an in-hand Mountain. However, he played Vendilion Clique and took Scapeshift. Fortunately, I drew another Scapeshift off the Clique’s ability!

He opened game three with a Thoughtseize for a Scapeshift and a Spell Snare on my turn 2 Coiling Oracle. On turn 4, he cast Mystical Teachings for Extirpate, removing all of my Scapeshifts. I didn’t scoop, as I’ve won games after Cranial before, but his turn 6 Teferi convinced me to concede.

2-1, 3-2

At this point, my terrible tiebreakers meant I was out of contention—I decided to drop. I learned several things from this tournament. The deck definitely needs a better plan vs. Vendilion Clique. For the most part, counterspells don’t matter much—I have my own Remands, and Boseiju after-board. However, the Clique wreaks havoc on your best-laid plans. The best solution may be Essence Scatter, but I’m not sure yet. The metagame is, as I predicted, heavily slanted towards Zoo and Doran. While I didn’t face any Zoo decks on either day, the Top 8 of both tournaments combined had 10 decks that plan on winning with creatures. Only 1 Faeries deck made Top 8. Hopefully, that deck will just die out—it’s not a very good match-up.

This week, I’ll be traveling to an Atlanta PTQ with Billy P and Hoss, so look for another report soon. It should have some interesting road stories, as we tend to find a way to create some shenanigans. This month has a PTQ every weekend, and I plan to attend them all. Keep reading for updates to the decklist, at least until I win one! Any comments or suggestions about anything—the deck, my writing style, my level of suck—are all welcome in the comments.

- Zach Efland
“ZacharE” on MTGO