fbpx

Chatter of the Squirrel – Full Disclosure: Berlin Testing Uncovered Part 3

Read Feature Articles every week... at StarCityGames.com!
Friday, November 28th – Zac Hill rounds out his temporary Premium stint for the completion of his preparation for Pro Tour: Berlin. Using every email sent between himself, Marijn Lybaert, Frank Karsten, and the rest of his testing team, he recreates the exact conditions they found when preparing for the tournament. As with parts 1 and 2, this is incredible stuff, and not for the faint of heart…

Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed part one, and didn’t die of old age in the middle of paragraph 142 or so. Last thing we heard, our heroes were zeroing in on a Zoo deck, with the possibility of an audible into Swans should the climate prove too hostile to the undercosted animals*. However, every once in a while you receive an email that you just know changes everything the second you read it – that it just hits you the second you see the decklist and you know you’re onto something.

In retrospect, of course, it seemed like everyone had this same reaction to the little Green men, the Creature Dash Elves (with occasional Insect gadabouts tagging along for good measure) who would ultimately swarm the tournament with a density almost unprecedented in the modern era. But take a moment, if you could, to put yourself in our shoes, get a picture of what was going through our heads, the tremendous excitement of maybe just maybe breaking the format wide open with the undisputed best deck there. Maybe that explains some of the secrecy-paranoia you might see emerge over the course of these emails. Maybe it’s just people’s natural reaction in the two or so weeks before the Pro Tour where everything speeds up dramatically and technology pays off the most. Maybe it’s a combination of those two things and more. Any way you look at it, though, this kind of feeding frenzy, to some degree, has happened at every Pro Tour at which I’ve played, and the way players handle the technological overflow, I think, has more to do with their performance at the tournament than anything except technical playskill.

Without further ado…

From Marijn

Hey Zac.

I think this deck is really good. I’ve only played about 10 games with it but it has been killing on turn 3/4 consistently, unless you are paired against Zoo, who kill your creatures… and then you just win with your guys. It’s harder to play than you think, so don’t give up if you are fizzling at first.

Your matchups versus Affinity and Zoo should be really good. I don’t know how it should do against other stuff, but I think it kills on the same turn most combo decks do + it doesn’t die to a single Stifle/other card in the format (except for Chalice of the Void, probably). It was also winning against the Red Dragon Stompy (which was beating the hell out of Zoo, btw). The Weird Harvests are probably just bad and could be more Chord of Callings, and the Twinblade Slasher might have to be the lifegain elf (G, 1/1, 1 life if guy comes in play).

Give it a chance and tell me what you think. I have no clue how it is against decks with counters / creature kill / Engineered Explosives, or against the Mind’s Desire combo decks, but I think it should be fine. If we’re 75/25 versus Zoo and Affinity and 50/50 versus the rest, I think we are good.

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Twinblade Slasher
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner’s Pact
3 Weird Harvest
2 Regal Force
2 Chord of Calling
1 Roar of the Crowd
15 Forest
1 Pendelhaven

AND this deck is fun to play.

Have fun.

Marijn

From Me:

I am definitely going to need a primer on this deck, as I definitely see that it’s insanely powerful, but I keep screwing up and being like one mana short of winning or going off. I don’t know when to cast Glimpse and I am missing some really important interactions, I think. I know you want to get Nettle/Birchlore together at any cost, and I think I keep making mistakes with Heritage Druid/Nettle as well. Part of the problem is I’m testing with virtual cards. When I don’t have Magical spells in my physical hands, I am the nut low. Where did you get this list? HALP!!

I am just soloing DI games with this thing on MWS, and I think maybe even better than making the Harvests Chords would be Commune with Nature. Spending one is just so much better than spending any amount greater than one. I am really bad with this deck right now though. Is there any good way to make all of these Insects into Elves? Also, Devoted Druid seems savage and might solve all your 1cc problems.

From Me:

… and this may be because I was terrible at actually casting Weird Harvest and Chord of Calling, but I’ve arrived at the following list that goldfishes t4ish and busts out infinite guys to beat Zoo. Also, your Desire matchup is actually pretty good because Soul Warden makes it necessary for them to hit multiple Mind’s Desires and not just Tendrils you. The downside is that I have no idea how I’d ever sideboard, but we can think about that.

I am sure we can up the goldfish clock at least a turn. Elvish Visionary is completely and totally nuts.

4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Essence Warden
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Elvish Visionary
1 Chord of Calling
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Regal Force
1 Roar of the Crowd
4 Wooded Foothills (you’re already vulnerable to Stifle because of Force’s trigger and I figure you need some sideboard action)
4 Windswept Heath
1 Breeding Pool
1 Pendelhaven
6 Forest

4 Xantid Swarm (NLU etc, Hivemaster is kind of awful so just sub in this guy)
4 Stifle (obv)
3 Elvish Champion (Screw comboing, just beat Zoo by attacking)
3 Caller of the Claw (Can’t think of anything better versus Firespout)
1 Hurkyl’s Recall (fighting chance versus Chalice, and mise versus Affinity)

From Marijn:

This deck was online but it didn’t have Summoner’s Pact right then… do you already get how it works? Most of the time you just play some guys on turn ½, and then on turn 3 you cast Glimpse and go off. Turn 3 is probably ambitious, but turn 4 should be done easily. I’m not sure that cutting Weird Harvest is right though. Casting just a Harvest for like 1 cheap Green guy and a Regal Force is enough to finish the game. Also, Elvish Visionary might be really good indeed.
I was goldfishing on turn 4 and sometimes even on turn 3. I’m sure it can be done.

From Marijn:

Turns out Mark already had Visionary, and he said it was awful and he cut it. Anyway, just make this deck work by the end of the weekend (!) and we can kick some ass with ELVES at the PT. I like. Also, we need a solution for Ethersworn Canonist guy. He pretty much kills us. Viridian Zealot / Shaman are options, and we can search them with Chord of Calling.

From Me:

I definitely do not think Visionary is awful. No idea how this deck showed up on MWS without Summoner’s Pact, as that card is definitely the best card in the deck. I’ll try my list out right now. But can you seriously write the normal order in which you play spells, etc.? Sometimes I come up like one mana short and it keeps screwing me up. Also how to play around Stifle etc.

From Marijn:

Hmmm, it’s not like you die to Stifle, right? It just slows you down a turn.

Here is a turn 3 kill:

Turn 1
Llanowar Elves

Turn 2
Elvish Visionary (assuming we are running this)

Turn 3
Begin with Glimpse
2 mana left + 1 elf + Llanowar Elf = 3mana + elf
Sentinel
2 mana left + 2 Elves
Birchlore Rangers
1 mana left + 3 Elves –> you tap Sentinel + Ranger for a mana –> 2 mana + 1 elf
Green Pact for another Sentinel (untap the other Sentinel with that) –> tap that Sentinel + the elf you had untapped –> 3 mana left
Play other Sentinel (untap first sentinel with that) –> tap 2 Sentinels –> still 3 mana
You’ve played 3 creatures that turn, chances are high you drew another elf (preferably a Heritage Druid)
Play that Heritage Druid –> untap 2 Sentinels with it –> think you get it from here.

From Me:

So this deck is totally nuts. Whenever you draw a Glimpse, you basically win right there.

I wanted to talk about some ways to try and “get there” when you don’t have a Glimpse. One of the things I was thinking of was adding Distant Melody, definitely in place of one of the Regal Forces and I don’t know what else. But that is one of the reasons I like Visionary; it’s so incredible to cast on turn 2 because it sets you up for a big turn even without the Glimpse.

Anyway, let me know any developments. My current list that I’m testing is:

8 Sac Land
6 Forest
1 Breeding Pool
1 Pendelhaven
1 Chord of Calling (has been incredible, but I never want more than one; it’s sort of how you make insects relevant when you are going off)
1 Roar of the Crowd (I am still not confident about this as the kill spell; sometimes it’s hard to get 20 permanents and not deck yourself. Fortunately, it’s immune to Stifle. Still, there might be something better)
1 Regal Force
2 Distant Melody
3 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Summoner’s Pact
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Glimpse
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Essence Warden
4 Wirewood Hivemaster

Also I figured the deck out so primer etc. is not necessary. You literally never lose with a Glimpse in your hand. The challenge is making the deck good enough when you don’t. That’s yet another reason I like Visionary, because it’s a means of just making something like 6 insects and 6 guys on turn 3 and bashing them dead turn 4. And lol @ Affinity trying to win games.

When I said Stifle is good against you, I meant more on the Big Guy than on Symbiote.

The sac-lands are really good as you really do not need to stall in the middle of comboing.

From Me:

a) Congrats on top-64ing Paris! Those huge tournaments are nightmares, and it’s got to be a good omen that you’re remaining on top of your game this close to Berlin. I know you’d probably have liked an even stronger finish, but with that much of a turnout, 38th is very impressive!

b) So I spent all day testing the Elves! deck, with some very impressive results:

5-1 Zoo
4-2 Swans
4-2 Mind’s Desire

I know it is really awkward to have tested “all day” and only played eighteen games, but the deck takes so long to go off, and you have to win in such a diversity of ways that it’s incredibly time-consuming. The upside is that people make mistakes against you all the time, and – the best part – I feel like I’m getting better at understanding the deck every single game I play. I have basically done nothing else the last two or three days but solo the deck in my spare time. It reminds me of High Tide, in that every game it basically feels like there’s something I can do to win. I’ve also become more comfortable with the numbers and am very confident in my maindeck, as well as with how the deck operates in the face of interaction. Speaking of, here is my main:

4 Llanowar Elves
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Essence Warden (so important)
4 Nettle Sentry
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
3 Elvish Visionary
1 Chord of Calling
1 Regal Force
2 Distant Melody
1 Roar of the Crowd
4 Summoner’s Pact
4 Glimpse of Nature
6 Forest
1 Pendelhaven
1 Breeding Pool
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath

One thing that I think would be incredibly useful is to formulate some kind of equation relating the number of one-mana elves you can cast to the number of mana you can generate with X Nettle Sentinels given, alternatively, a Heritage Druid or a Birchlore Rangers in play. Then, given those variables, an equation putting Wirewood Symbiote into the picture. The thing is, these particular interactions are very tricky, and occasionally some games I lose I feel like I could have won had I activated a Rangers instead of a Heritage Druid and vice-versa. Part of it is just learning through feel, of how to maximize my mana, and it’s related to your wanting to tap your Sentries as much as possible and preferably for Druid, obviously. But like, for example, when to tap him to Birchlore Rangers versus waiting for getting 3 to tap for Druid, etc. It’s one of those things, I have played the deck enough to understand when intuitively rather than intellectually, but without that intellectual knowledge I am more inclined to screw up at a PT without takebacks. And then Symbiote complicates everything, but I feel in general like I am very good with the deck as it stands right now. Wow, it’s hard to play.

Anyway, the general tone of the matchups. The thing about the Zoo matchup is that you should literally win 80% or more of your games. The only game I lost was a mulligan into a one-lander where I drew too many useless Summoner’s Pacts instead of actual lands or spells I could cast. But every single card in your deck is basically a must-kill threat, and because of that you frequently overwhelm them. Symbiote in particular is absolutely busted, because you can do things like play a Visionary, block with it, bounce it, and just sit there until you can win even if your hand isn’t all that gaseous. If they spend a turn burning your Symbiote, mise! Even Mogg Fanatic isn’t that big an issue just because of all the stuff they have to kill. Essence Warden as one-mana 1/1 gain 5 life is surprisingly powerful. But without any way to bust through, and because you take a small amount of damage from your own lands, you can more or less dictate the pace of the game. Just stay out of burn range etc. The thing is they can’t overcommit to attacking you either because all of the sudden out of nowhere you can become the aggressor.

One thing to look out for though, I imagine, is Jitte, in addition to obviously Canonist. I would imagine we need some artifact removal, and it would be sweet if it didn’t cost 3 like Viridian Shaman (though we obviously want one of these guys to tutor for) or die to Fanatic like Zealot. Maybe good old-fashioned Oxidize? Or Jittes of our own?

Swans: Swans was 4-2 but it felt like we should actually have a very slight disadvantage. The thing is we have to basically play all-in to their removal, and with any window at all they can either kill us or tutor up Firespout/Explosives. However, they don’t really have that much time to do so, and, crucially, they can’t actually afford to tap out for a Swans. The difference between us and Desire is that Condescend and Remand accomplish next to nothing unless they are literally about to kill us, and the games they win are the games where they just combo beforehand or chain something like three Counterspells. One thing that is nice is that there is only a certain threshold of damage they can deal us with a Conflagrate; they can wipe our board and set up their hand or whatever, but with Warden sometimes if we’re in the sixties, even without a win, it can be problematic for them. Even with their deck in their hands they can’t really set up a lock. But one thing that is problematic on one hand but nice on the other is: the chief way they can disrupt our board at instant speed (Chain) is also part of their combo kill, so we never have to face any dilemmas like whether to “go for it” with a Pact because we think they have a combo, only to be disrupted by something like a Smother on our Heritage Druid to punish us for going for it. Chain of Plasma is their primary form of creature control, so if you’re playing around them having the combo you’re also playing around their having a Chain, so it makes it a whole lot easier to evaluate when it is you have to try to win the game, and also lets you play around one of your crucial guys dying. In the 4-2 set we agreed it probably would have been 3-3 if he had Chained my Heritage Druid earlier than he had, but that is one of the beauties about this deck: people will not know how to play against it. It’s so hard to play the deck properly to begin with that I can’t imagine that many people testing against it. Because of that, we’ll often get away with things we shouldn’t be able to, like spare Heritage activations and an improper valuing of specifically Wirewood Symbiote interactions. The key in this matchup, I found, was that you can test-spell with Glimpse. From there, everything you cast is going to draw you a card regardless, so it’s hard for them to choose where you break you up. There was a game where he Condescended my Glimpse for two, I paid, and I eventually fell one elf short of beating him, and I felt like I could have won that game. Who knows. But the thing is you’ve got perfect information whereas they are going to have to make a more or less arbitrary decision, and even then you can “get” them. “Resolves. Play Glimpse #2” etc.

I feel like we have a handy edge against the non-Grapeshot versions of Desire. Because it’s such a flat-out race, though, the versions with Remand I think actually would fare much better against us. Ad Nauseam is generally very good. One thing I actually noticed was that having Tendrils would have allowed me to win one game I lost due to his Angel’s Grace, by virtue of its causing loss of life, not damage. On the other hand, the game before I won just off making 5 insects and 4 elves and swinging twice, and then Roaring for exactly 8 due to Symbiote shenanigans and the naming of the creature type “Insect.” So it’s difficult to say which one you’d want; I imagine, though, that remaining relatively invulnerable to Stifle is worth the occasional Angel’s Grace difficulty. If nothing else, we can sideboard a Tendrils as the kill card for game 2. Essence Warden is again extremely good here; it’s so difficult for them to kill you at 34 ish life without chaining back-to-back Desires, which is not easy for them to do if you haven’t given them tons of time. It’s important to attack when you can, if it wouldn’t compromise your ability to combo earlier. Again, I’d love some kind of equation that would let me know on the front end how many guys I could get away with putting into the red zone, but experience etc.

Grapeshot may or may not change things. Obviously on the one hand it could wipe our board, and crucially I could see it being a huge beating even for something like turn 2 Mox –> Prism –> Grapeshot. On the other hand. we have so many guys, and it’s probably harder to hit really large amounts of damage without a Swath and chaining Desires.

I imagine Affinity is like Zoo; against decks that are not comboing us, time is always on our side if they don’t have mass removal. We can just chill and chump block and trigger Visionaries and Hivemasters and Wardens. I’m testing Affinity tomorrow but that is my gut; they either Thopter/Plate you or that is. And again, it’s not like Zoo where you deal yourself a billion damage, and so one Thopter attack does the job.

I want to test NLU as well.

So: this deck is for real. Very for real. It feels fundamentally broken; like, sure, everyone knows Mind’s Desire is broken but, for six mana, it ought to be. Glimpse is the most powerful card in Extended if you can use it. Recycle saw play at 6 mana. Glimpse does it for G. It’s so good to just play for value on turn 2, too, if you just need like a land. Like, sure, G, draw two cards and gain two life. I’ll play that spell. But I’m really pleased with this exact configuration of the deck’s ability to win without Glimpse, which is what, to me, the other versions were lacking. Sometimes, especially against the decks with men, the triggers (insects, life, cards) are your “Glimpse” in that they buy you enough time. Other times, you have a Heritage Druid and a Force and that is. But Distant Melody in particular is extremely, extremely good, because on about turn 4 it allows you to “go off” with one or two mana open to do something afterwards, whereas the Regal Force turn 3 ideal of turn 1 Llanowar Elf, turn 2 Heritage Druid Elf Elf, turn 3 Force leaves you with no spare mana even on that kind of god draw. With Melody, you’re winning. And I’ve never, ever, ever found a need to cast multiple Forces. If you’re relatively far along and just need some gas, typically just Pacting for a Symbiote, casting it, getting back a Visionary, and casting it are going to give you enough distance with just one Glimpse or a bunch of triggers versus a “guy” deck.

The issue now is sideboarding. We’re at Square 0. We need brilliance. I was thinking Stifles, our own Jittes, maybe Barkshell Blessing against Firespout but that does nothing versus Explosives, and against Explosives decks I imagine Stifle frequently is lame against every card that is not Engineered Explosives. Suggestions?

Zac

~~

So that’s the genesis – though we’re still a fair amount of distance away from the final build. Still, notice how the pace and the urgency have picked up now that we feel like we’re “on to something.” Also, I think a crucial lesson we learned was we had to start testing game-1 matchups with a configuration that would allow for sideboarding, even though as yet we hadn’t introduced other colors into the deck. Hence the sac-lands and Breeding Pool before Distant Melody even happened.

I think another valuable technique was sitting down and discussing how to actually play the deck. Particularly when you’re relatively isolated, getting someone else’s perspective on the actual mechanics of playing your spells – especially in a complicated deck like this one – can straighten out many of your misconceptions or plain-and-simple errors. Finally, I like that Marijn mentioned other possible card options even when he sent out the original decklist. Too often I see good ideas squandered because people are only talking about the deck they are playing at the moment, instead of putting other concepts out there for other people to evaluate. Essence Warden, for example, was just completely insane, but I wouldn’t have even thought about it at all if M hadn’t went ahead and mentioned it when he sent out the list with Twinblade Slashers – I actually thought it was a human!

~~

From Me:

… literally getting up to assist with a presentation, but I just wanted to mention that it seems like Sculler is not as widely known about as I thought it would be initially…

Also, from a reliable source:

The French are actually keeping really quiet on what they are doing… what’s really interesting I heard is that Saito was talking at Paris about Mind’s Desire and a transformational sideboard for that deck, with Magus of the Moon and duals.

The French are also looking in to Elves, Desire, Faeries, and maybe Mono Blue … everyone’s backup plan is Zoo. Nobody is saying there is a must-play deck yet.

However, everything said is hearsay, so take it with a tub full of salt. They are only going to start hard core with the whole gang next week…

Will keep you posted.

~~

This type of email is always awkward because it means that someone is leaking, but it’s also just so essential to try and gauge what other people know. As we saw in Berlin, one piece of technology changes everything. Jan hands the dealer a list, trying to be discreet, and all of the sudden the dealer announces “so ONE ORZHOV PONTIFF?” and that just was, boys. So much of the PT is about networking anyway, so if you know who one person is working with and who they are likely to talk to and who they frequently influence, you can actually begin to map out a landscape of what all the “name players” are running – sometimes before the PT even begins!

The downside, of course, is that the same thing can happen to you! Everyone knows that I for all practical purposes ought to be applying for Belgian citizenship, so when someone plays against Marijn or Pascal or Mark or Christophe or Jan or Fried or whomever, if they play me later they basically have intel on my entire plan.

~~

From Marijn:

Could Intruder Alarm be broken in this deck? (From Marijn, re: Elves)

From Me:

The thing about Intruder Alarm is what do you cut? I think the idea is really, really good, but it means there’s an engine card you’re cutting and most of the time, mana isn’t the problem, cards are; if you can three mana, frequently it means you’re at infinite mana.

Hi,

I tested this Elf deck versus Zoo (against myself, since I’m supposed to keep it secret): 8-4 for Elves. So far the Elf deck seems strong… however, it may be easy to hate out with Engineered Explosives, Firespout, etc. An active Umezawa’s Jitte is also deadly.

Distant Melody was quite strong. You need at least 1 Regal Force in the deck, but Distant Melody was always very important to draw. Elvish Visionary I like better than Twinblade Slasher; it just adds some drawing consistency. And I think I like 1 Roar of the Crowd better than Entity, since Roar can just always kill the turn you’re going off, whereas you don’t always have an untapped creature without summoning sickness that can attack for DI with Entity.

The best idea versus Firespout is to play at least 1 Caller of the Claw. Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender may also work, but doesn’t do anything versus Engineered Explosives.

Do you guys really believe that this Elf deck is a better choice than Zoo for the Pro Tour? I did overhear Andre Muller talking about this deck at GP: Paris, so it probably is a serious contender, but people will also know about it.

Frank

From Marijn:

Thanks for keeping this secret, Frank. I still remember Valencia where I was winning games simply because people didn’t know what was going on. I think with Elfball we will have the same advantage or even bigger cause this deck is a combo deck while they might not expect it. I could see people thinking: I can wait another turn till my Lotus Bloom arrives. It’s not like that Llanowar Elf and Symbiote are going to kill me this turn.

Marijn

From Me:

That is exactly the point I was hoping to make with this email; you’re totally right in that this deck kills out of nowhere if you haven’t tested against it, and most people that have played it are playing crappier versions and are bad with the deck.

I know from intel that ManuelB and the French know the deck exists. No idea the extent of their knowledge. I’m actually with fine people knowing that looser versions exist, because they’ll play against the deck incorrectly. Still, any intel we could get at this point would be extremely valuable.

Anyway, right now I am keeping the deck on absolute lockdown.

Some notes:

I’m running Oxidize in the board and am very happy with it, but I was thinking about switching to Naturalize or Wear Away if the deck gets out and people think they can beat it versus Chalice. Also even better versus Chalice, but much more narrow, is the Gaea’s Herald – but that guy is also gas versus Blue decks, if they don’t have Firespoutish removal.
I’ve been thinking about ways around the mass removal problem and have come up with ideas. The first was Caller of the Claw against non-Combo decks, as you can just kill them with that spell alone. Against Pyroclasm or Firespout, though, Favor of the Mighty just does the job by itself. We’d have to play some White, but that can be done comparatively easily. Pithing Needle stops Explosives but not Firespout, etc. etc.

Also had the idea of Profane Command as a kill spell, as it gets around Angel’s Grace without making us vulnerable to Stifle. Still, though, Roar is really savage if you just draw it, and you can actually cast it relevantly, unlike P-Command where you need even more guys for BB. I Roared a Canonist against Zoo for value and just went off on life points.

Are we going to need any mirror technology besides like Jittes, we think? I can see one Elvish Champion being good against a variety of things, but no idea if it’s imperative.

This is the point in time where innovation provides maximal rewards. No question about it, if this deck is still relatively under wraps, we have what is probably the best deck. At least if Blue isn’t an impossible matchup. Right now we just need to jam testing and cruise Gatherer.

From Me:

Testing Report: Green versus Affinity game 1, Green versus Zoo Game 2

So I wanted to finalize my gauntlet game-ones, bearing in mind that I have yet to play against a Blue deck – halp! – with the Affinity matchup, and as expected the results were very promising. The thing about both this and Zoo is that you have so many must-kills – and Zoo can’t really interact with those must-kills at all! Because of that, you’re able to just sit there on Wirewood Symbiotes and draw infinite cards off a Visionary even if you don’t have a Glimpse or a Melody; that is yet another reason I like the Visionary, because he’s two cards a turn even if you haven’t draw your “easy-engine” spells. Warden buys you time and Hivemaster allows you to go on offense. Literally the only way they beat you is by casting Ornithopter backed by one or multiple Cranial Platings, and it’s typically rather easy to see that coming.

Not much to say about this matchup. It’s straightforward.

For the Zoo post-games, I wanted to see what I could do if I boarded as few cards as possible, since it’s such a strong matchup. I also assumed they would not be gearing for this matchup – this deck is so much worse if people anticipate it – but have an anti-Desire and anti-mirror board. I took my game 1 deck and sideboarded out 3 Blightnings (what we assume are most people’s Molten Rain) and 2 Baubles for 2 Aethersworn Canonist and 3 Jitte. As for this deck, I took out 3 Summoner’s Pact – reason being it’s terrible in multiples, and unlike versus other decks where you can set up due to being able to rely upon a Heritage Druid or whatever, you don’t want to give Zoo a way to Just Kill You – and 2 Distant Melody, since you don’t really need the card-draw given that Warden and Glimpse and Hivemaster are all engines in and of themselves. I don’t know if that is right but it seems fine. I boarded in 2 Jitte, 2 Oxidize, and 1 Viridian Shaman.

The post-board matchup was just as much of a slaughter as the game-ones. I went 5-1 and it wasn’t really close. The one game he won was off both Jitte and Canonist, suggesting to me that it would be fine to swap the last Summoner’s Pact for either a Shaman or an Oxidize, since that is the only way really they can beat you, but I don’t know that a) I want to devote that much board space or b) that it would make that much of a difference. The thing is, Oxidize is also nuts against Tidehollow Sculler and the Affinity matchup obviously, so they’re almost never dead – but I wouldn’t want to draw a 2-Oxidize opening hand and lose because I have no action, either. Naturalize might be fine too since they have Oblivion Ring and I am sure some other deck will rely on some enchantment somewhere, but again, what are the cuts? What is great about this matchup, but that you have to understand in order to play it correctly, is that you don’t ever have to blow your load. I cast Glimpses just for value all the time. The reason is that if you have Jitte and they don’t they are just dead, and Hivemaster/Warden/Visionary/Symbiote almost always is as well. You could honestly cut Roar, maybe, but I like having the “just kill you” option in case someone’s ‘mirror’ plan is like Firespouts and they turn out to be savage against us as well.

What I want to test next is Desire/Swans post-board, but I might have to leave that to you as I have to go out of town Wednesday-Saturday. I was thinking a board of Stifle/swap the Roar for a Tendrils because they have Angel’s Grace and zero post-board Stifles. You take out the Roar and 4 Hivemasters because a) you don’t need the Insects for Roar and b) that guy just begs to get Remanded, and with Stifle you don’t need the Insect-Clock-you option. He also walks right into Firespout, which I am worried about. With 4 Stifle it might just be possible to play a kill-you-turn-6 beatdown deck where you retain some post-Firespout gas and the occasional nut-draw combo kill, or you might just say “whatever” and go all-in with your guys, forcing to have the removal spell. It’s not like you can’t recover; a Symbiote means you can pick your sh** back up and you can always just Glimpse for 3 or something next turn. Maybe. I mean this is why we need to test it, as it can’t be good for us to give them a way to wipe our board, but Stifle is also promising just because they can’t really play around it.
Barkshell Blessing for Wraths/Firespouts?

What I am really worried about are Engineered Explosives, because Stifle isn’t particularly good against that archetype. Threads is okay against us, but not at all fantastic.

Anyway, the more I play this deck the more insane it becomes, and I would love if you could try and test it as much as possible to work out the kinks. For reference, the present list:

3 Elvish Visionary
2 Distant Melody
1 Roar of the Crowd
1 Regal Force
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Essence Warden
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Summoner’s Pact
1 Chord of Calling
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
1 Pendelhaven
6 Forest
1 Breeding Pool

2 Umezawa’s Jitte (3 is probably fine)
2 Oxidize
1 Viridian Shaman
4 Stifle
1 Tendrils of Agony
5 open slots.

From Marijn:

Hey Zac. I might go testing on Friday but I don’t have a lot of time either… I’m 90% playing this deck btw. The other 10% = you deciding that Zoo is better, lol.

As for sideboard: why not run the Tendrils maindeck over Roar? Any particular reason?

I like it how our matchup versus Zoo and Affinity are 80%. I expect at least 25% of the people playing this deck.

Marijn

From Me:

By this deck do you mean Zoo/Affinity?

The reason I want Roar main is to be less vulnerable to Stifle, which I think will be in maindecks all over the place. Zoo is insane, and I really like our version, but I’d rather just kick the sh** out of Zoo and worry about the rest later. As long as we keep this deck under wraps, it doesn’t look like anyone knows about it. I have heard zero about anyone knowing it even exists beyond “some Magic League deck,” and that’s tremendously to our advantage.

We just need to finalize sideboards and all that, but we can do that when in Berlin if absolutely necessary, though I’d like the full 75 beforehand so we can just jam games.

Going to continue just playing with this deck as much as I can to get a feel for what does and does not win etc.

Zac

From Me:

Maybe I just had the answer all the time, but I definitely did not need more than one Pact post-board against Zoo and found it terrible. I don’t try to “go off” and just gain life and make guys for value. You could cut Chord there; I’ve really liked having one, as it has won me games and has never cost me, but I’d never want to draw it in multiples and it’s probably not necessary against Zoo. Still, I like it better than Pact as I’d rather spend the mana up front and not lose to something random. But is making like 3 Insect tokens on turn 2 with a bunch of elves not enough? Like they have to take so much damage they are never in a good swinging position, and Symbiote gives you infinite blockers. Also, I’d much rather have a Forest than a Chrome Mox, as going down a card is awful in this deck (you need every piece) and accelerating +1 mana is sort of irrelevant in a deck that measures its mana in terms of the number of creatures it has untapped. Especially since the deck mulligans really well.

I am very glad the Blue matchups are as encouraging at they are.

Chain as Unsummon does not seem bad.

I liked having our Jitte as sort of a Seal of Disenchant that could also kill Canonist etc., but Canonist was actually not just GOOD GAME by himself. I mean, he was good. But you’re still a deck that starts at 20+ life against a deck that starts at 14, and swinging can be difficult. I found their Jittes were more problematic. I think keeping Roar is probably good but you could try cutting it; I agree with Jan that you never want to sideboard out that many different cards. I think the only cards that can ever be cut are Chord, Hivemaster, 1 Melody, Summoner’s Pact. That said, that’s still a decent amount of flexibility. I think sideboarding 1 Tendrils might be something to look at, too, since it’s just many levels of better against non-Stifle decks.

From Marijn:

I really believe you also want one Mirror Entity, there are just so many games where you just End Of Turn search out an Entity with Chord and attack with three or four guys on the next turn and activate it for 4 or 5. Explosives and Firespout are a problem indeed, but so is Stifle for storm decks, Kataki for Affinity… and they are cards people will play. I don’t think people will be playing a lot of Explosives or Firespout.

The sideboard also needs some Oxidize/Seal of Primordium/Fracturing Gust (or whatever that 2 G/W G/W G/W sorcery is called).

Thorn of Amethyst and Leyline of the Void is also an option.

From Jan:

An update of our last testing session:

I got convinced of Mirror Entity, as I couldn’t come up with any situation where Roar might be better. (Except some lousy ones like: I started going off with zero creatures on board, or they have an equal number of creatures on board + Damnation in hand + enough stuff to deal with your full grip afterwards.) Note that you can go infinite with Mirror Entity if you haven’t played a Glimpse (this has come up in my games). You need Heritage Druid, Symbiote, Nettle Sentinel, and Mirror Entity. You turn everything into 1/1 elves (-G left), tap Heritage, Nettle and Symbiote for GGG (GG left), return Symbiote to your hand to untap Heritage, and play Symbiote (G left and back at the starting situation).

Right now there are two builds of the deck in our testing group: without fetchlands (to prevent you from getting Stifled, which can be crucial with 17 lands) and with fetchlands (to have a sideboard). Most people are leaning towards without fetchlands apparently, but without much testing results.

My current list:

4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Essence Warden
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elf
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
3 Elvish Visionary
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Chord of Calling (Removed my lone Melody for a Chord even I don’t like it that much, but with Entity + Burrenton in the board it’s probably better)
1 Regal Force
1 Mirror Entity
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Windswept Heath
1 Temple Garden (Removed the Mox)
1 Breeding Pool
7 Forest

Sideboard:
3 Oxidize
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
3 Stifle
3 Chain of Vapor (versus Swans + can help you going off by bouncing a couple guys)
1 Gaea’s Herald
1 Elvish Champion

Test results:

Versus Zoo: 3-1 before SB, 12-6 after SB (taking out Melody (now Chord), Pact and Roar (now Mirror Entity) for 2 Oxidize and 1 Viridian Shaman. I guess now I have two Chords you can also have 2 Chord 2 Pacts after SB instead of 1 and 3). Zoo brought in 3 Jittes and 2 Ethersworn Canonists. We really noticed that Pact was good to have and this really seems like a good sideboarding strategy.

Versus NLB: 1-3 before SB (I heard about fetchland version going 0-4 once more, where non-fetchland was 3-1 for elves). The NLB is the matchup where the fetchland debate takes place. How much NLB do we expect? And we need to test it some more (both with and without fetchlands), maybe also against versions without Explosives.

Versus Swans: 3-5 before SB. Firespout hurts. Sideboard still to be tested.

To be done:

– Test versus Desire before and after SB.
– Test versus Swans after SB.
– Test versus NLB before and after SB and with/without fetchlands.
– Test versus Doran, TrinketGoyf?

Jan

From Me:

The fetchlands also really, really do matter for “thinning out the deck.” I tried a bunch of solo hands in between rounds playing everything as Forests, and you really do notice it being more difficult to go off with just one Glimpse.

Played a really small number of games against NLU, went 3-1, but this version was maindecking neither Stifle nor Explosives, instead playing the full number of Spell Snares. I had him put in Explosives just to see, and it won the one game they became relevant. It seems that absent Jitte or Explosives, or them Stifling your only land, nothing they do matters much. It’s worth noting that you can just like beat them down. Jitte seems good in this matchup as well, but it costs 2 and isn’t a man, so. Pithing Needle seems really good against NLU, as it can hit both Explosives and Jitte. Also, what about Suppression Field?

Thanks Jan for pointing out the Mirror Entity thing. Also good to know that Pact is still fine.

I am sold on Entity over Roar; I’ll just have to keep track of which guys have summoning sickness better than I do already. I really, really like Distant Melody, though. I want to try out 2 Chords/17 land so I am going with this version for tomorrow’s testing. If you have any commentary on it please let me know within the next 24 hours:

3 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
1 Mirror Entity
3 Essence Warden
1 Distant Melody
2 Chord of Calling
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
1 Regal Force
4 Summoner’s Pact
4 Heritage Druid
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Wirewood Symbiote
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
1 Pendelhaven
8 Sack Land
6 Snow Forest

How are y’all liking Jan’s sideboard?

Marijn:

First of all: Jan was playing the deck against Zoo more yesterday and he finally went something like 12-6 or something. It did get better at the end, as I believe it was something like 8-6 at one point. He cut the Jittes as he didn’t really like them, and he told me Summoner’s Pact was fine after board. Pascal, on the other hand, who has been playing this deck quite a lot, was pretty much winning every matchup. He 6-2d me pre-board when I was playing Zoo (with Blightning, and they were really good btw) and 4-2d the NLU deck after Fried went 0-4 against it.

This is my (our?) current list:

17 lands: I know you are playing 16 but I’m unsure if that’s enough. Now with sac lands I don’t wanna lose randomly to double Stifle so I went up to 17 lands.
8 sac land
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
6 Snow-Covered Forests (to confuse people even more)
1 Pendelhaven
4 Birchlore
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Heritage Druid
3/4 Hivemaster
2 Elvish Visionary
1 Mirror Entity (really think this one is good)
2/3 Chord of calling (mainly because it gives you the possibility to play 1 Burrenton after sideboarding versus Firespout decks, but also because I’ve won several games versus Zoo just EOT getting Mirror Entity and attacking with 5 guys)
1/2 Distant Melody (both you and Frank say we need two, and I also found it really good whenever I drew it)
4 Symbiote
4 Summoner’s Pact
3/4 Essence Warden
1 Regal Force
4 Glimpse of Nature

Sideboard
1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
1 Gaddock Teeg. I know it’s bad with Distant Melody and Chord but I think it could be really good to tutor for against Desire in response to them going off.
1 or more Viridian Shaman. Seemed better than Oxidize versus Zoo btw, so more than one might be right…
4 Stifle (need to be tested but they look good on paper. Sideboarding 4 Stifle, Burrenton and Teeg seems hard though . -4 Hivemaster, -2 Distant Melody +1 Burrenton +1 Teeg +4 Stifle maybe?
1 Tendrils (versus Angel’s Grace)
Some Brain Freeze maybe? As a replacement for Tendrils against Desire? Also works versus Angel’s Grace (it’s not like they are going to get a big storm count if their deck is empty), and it’s also broken in the mirror. Let them play 10 elves and draw 10 cards from Glimpse, you Brain Freeze the rest of their deck in response to elf number 11.

I don’t know what Desire looks like after board. Just add 3 Firespout I guess, and cut something random.

Marijn

From Me:

The thing about this deck, M, is that it is like our Tooth deck from Valencia. You only win with it if you really want to win with it. If you are autopiloting you are not going to get there. I am 100% confident in the deck but really need to know how many people know about it, and whether the metagame is affecting what people are doing against it. Also;

-What does Desire look like post-board with Firespouts so I can play against it?

-What list are you working from right now? You know my main and some of the sideboard, but I want to make sure we are on the same page since you just mentioned Chord and I only run one of those guys.

I tried, like Jan, cutting a Melody for a Mox and that is definitely wrong. You need a critical density of “going-off” enablers. Fortunately I don’t think anyone else has Melody, even if they have this deck.

From Frank:

A Desire list boarded versus Elves:

(Lands=19)
2 Dreadship Reef
3 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Watery Grave
2 Island
3 Steam Vents
2 Cascade Bluffs
2 Gemstone Mine

(Core cards=32)
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Peer Through Depths
4 Ponder
4 Desperate Ritual
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Rite of Flame
4 Seething Song
4 Manamorphose

(Remaining slots=3)
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Remand
1 Grapeshot
(Sideboarded slots=6)
3 Firespout
3 out of: Firespout, Magma Jet, Electrolyze, Repeal, Chain of Vapor, Echoing Truth (whichever you think is more likely, probably at least a couple Chain of Vapor)

-Agree with 17 lands. I would play a couple snow covered and a couple non-snow forests for maximum confusion, lol.

-I love the Brain Freeze mirror tech.

The Dutchies have caught on to the deck as well, completely independently, because they were playing their Zoo decks versus these Elfball decks online often (including against Japanese players) and losing. Furthermore, a Dutch dealer has sold a complete Elfball deck to some Italian guy. In other words, many people will know about the deck.

My Zoo deck is currently more tweaked versus Elves, because I’m starting to think that it may become a reasonable part of the metagame. Ethersworn Canonist has found a way back in my sideboard (good versus Glimpse), along with Jund Charm (kills Elves, occasionally good in the mirror for the reinforce, and good versus Protean Hulk / dredge combos). Furthermore, my maindeck now has 4 Mogg Fanatic, and lots of burn.

Could you test Elfball after sideboard versus this boarded Zoo deck? If the Elfball deck can still survive an array of burn, Ethersworn Canonist, Jittes, and Jund Charms, then that’s a very strong sign.

(Lands = 21)
4 Wooded Foothills
3 Windswept Heath
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Sacred Foundry
1 Stomping Ground
1 Temple Garden
1 Blood Crypt
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Steam Vents
1 Forest
1 Mountain

(Creatures = 25)
4 Wild Nacatl
2 Isamaru, Hound of Konda
4 Kird Ape
4 Mogg Fanatic
1 Figure of Destiny
3 Tarmogoyf
4 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Ethersworn Canonist

(Spells=14)
4 Lightning Helix
2 Tribal Flames
4 Incinerate
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Jund Charm

From Marijn:

It’s obvious that people know about the deck but the decks online don’t have Summoner’s Pact and he is so essential. Frank, don’t give out our list of elfball please as it’s very different from the lists online.

I just 6-0d Billy Moreno Zoo. The Pillars were annoying but easy to overcome with Essence Warden + Hivemaster. He once went Pillar turn 2 on the play (after a turn 1 Nacatl) and I still won while I didn’t have Essence Warden (he didn’t have Tribal Flames or Helix to finish me though). So Pillar is pretty crappy in the board versus us.

I do want to point out here that we were making our sideboard plan versus Zoo assuming everyone will have Jitte/Sculler/Canonist. Well, Billy’s list doesn’t run any of those, so oxidize / Viridian Shaman were useless.

I do think Jitte is pretty good versus Zoo, and for the mirror probably as well. Four mana is hard, but with Llanowar Elves / Heritage Druid / Birchlore Ranger, you get there quite easily. Maybe we should test the mirror a bit and see how good Brain Freeze is. It’s not like they’ll expect it, as the lists online don’t even run Blue.

From Me:

Err Marijn: which was the list you were running in testing? I am listening to you in this discussion because I know your heart is in it on the deck and I trust your results. But 6-0ing Zoo seems very reasonable; I mean, won’t happen all the time but we are so strategically favored, and our list is just a level or so above most of the lists online.

From Marijn

The list I’m running in testing is the one I sent you two days ago. With 2 Chord of Calling, 2 Distant Melody, 17 lands and 3 Hivemaster/4 Essence Warden. If everyone knows about the deck I think we’ll need some mirror tech actually, because once they started testing it they’ll have found out it’s broken. Brain Freeze is probably the best we can do though… we can test that once we’re in Berlin. Could you test the Stifles against Desire? And test versus Frank’s Zoo list? If Frank’s list beats us, I might still run that actually. I’m bringing both decks with me so I can still decide there.

~~

I want to pause here because this is where the mailing starts to get more schizophrenic as the pace picks up. Notice Entity is taken as a given, then suggested again to me directly, then is taken as an essential part of the decklist again as it becomes evident that it’s been thoroughly tested by now.

In any kind of mailing list – as with a lot of things – communication is absolutely vital, essential. When everyone is so geographically scattered, the importance of this kind of thing magnifies. The Belgians, naturally, have been gearing up their playtesting with one another, and so a lot of their innovations and adaptations are left out of the text-exchange because they emerge spontaneously. This is why I take a step back in the above email to establish exactly what list is getting played, against what, by whom, etc. There were a few mails, which I have kept out of this article for privacy purposes, that concerned who was helming what deck, just because some people are better at playing certain archetypes, some people favor or disfavor certain decks, etc. Before a tournament of this magnitude, it is vital to make sure you’re keeping track of all of these relatively minute details! If a guy with the least experience at piloting Elves, for example, goes 0-X in a very interactive matchup like NLU, you have to weight that differently than if it’s your veteran or the deck’s designer. Yet another great thing about Jan and Marijn in particular is that they were able to articulate those differences and, in some circumstances, concede that even they may be making their own mistakes.

Yet another tremendous kudos to Frank for delivering optimized post-sideboard decklists as well. When you’re focusing on one particular deck – which can be essential, in a format like this one where it’s clear you need to innovate quickly – it’s easy to lose sight of how other decks in the environment are reacting, not only to you but the entire format, so you can know what kind of splash damage you’re likely to face, what people’s boards are realistically going to contain.

~~

From Me:

a) Almost everyone I have run into plans on swapping their Desire sideboard out to transform into that Red deck.

b) It seems like everyone is undervaluing Swans. Would going down to just 4 Ponder at the 1cc slot and playing Chalice be effective? You already run Chrome Mox and it is a tremendously potent weapon against most of the field…

From Me:

Did a bunch of testing today: pre-board versus NLU with 2 Jitte/2 Explosives, post-board against Frank’s Zoo, post-board versus Desire with 2 Chain of Vapor / 2 Ad Nauseam / 3 Firespout – both running Stifle and running Thorn.

I am supremely happy with the following maindeck:

3 Essence Warden
4 Wirewood Symbiote
4 Nettle Sentinel
4 Birchlore Rangers
4 Heritage Druid
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Elvish Visionary
4 Glimpse of Nature
4 Wirewood Hivemaster
2 Chord of Calling
1 Mirror Entity
4 Summoner’s Pact
2 Distant Melody
1 Regal Force
1 Temple Garden
1 Breeding Pool
6 Forest
1 Pendelhaven
8 Sack Lands

The NLU set was 5-5, and it feels like I screwed up one game not keeping track of how to properly play around Cryptic Command by resetting my Symbiotes with Entity, untapping my guys, then resetting my Symbiotes so I could untap my guys during combat after they have been tapped. I cast a second Glimpse when I could have gone for the Entity lock instead and so would have had the cards left in my library to play each of the Symbiotes six times (as it was, my guys got tapped and he targeted me with double A-Visions). The thing about this matchup is that you have strategic superiority, though. All of the games he won were either due to Explosives or Jitte or were the game above, or were the one matchup where Stifle mattered by kolding two of my lands while I sat there twiddling my thumbs discarding Creature-Elves. It is just so easy to play around so many of their spells, though. They give you a window and they are either dead or effectively dead. Don’t get me wrong; I think the matchup against NLU with 2 maindeck Explosives is maybe 55% max, but some people don’t have Explosives or don’t have Jitte or what-have-you. More importantly, they don’t have much room for error. If they haven’t tested the matchup much and just blind Clique you on turn 3 expecting to get there, sometimes you just nail them. Overall I am not thrilled to play against this matchup, but I’m not scared, either. Some of your draws you don’t care about Stifle, some of your draws you don’t care about Spell Snare, and with an early Hivemaster you can circumvent Explosives (I engineered a situation where Explosives wouldn’t matter, but he had Jitte, and it was on a Clique and not a Tarmogoyf so I couldn’t negate the effect with a Symbiote). The thing is they really don’t have a good way to neutralize the card Glimpse of Nature. You just play it for value. Chord has also proven its worth here specifically.

We didn’t get to test post-board games, but it seems like far and away the best card I could have access to would be Pithing Needle, as that solves both the Jitte and the Explosives problem and deals with multiple copies on the way. I’d also like my own Jittes – maybe 3 Needle and two Jitte, or a Viridian Shaman to tutor up Jitte answers. It can also resolve a pain-in-the-ass Pithing Needle. Without Explosives their deck is actually just dead to stupid 1/1 creatures en masse.

I would cut Pacts, just as I do versus Zoo. I know y’all disagree with me on this one, but I’ll just articulate my logic and you can either take it or leave it. Basically, the reason Pact is so good in the deck is that it makes your goldfish infinitely faster; all of the sudden, the turn you want to go off, you have access to four more copies of whatever card you need in your deck. This only really matters when you’re goldfishing, though; against decks that interact with you, you need resilience over raw speed assuming they start interacting in relevant ways on turn 1 or 2. Pact gives them another way to win a game that they wouldn’t win otherwise by being difficult to cast in a position where you are trying to gain incremental advantage, and I have found in both of these matchups that such is your position. You can’t cast it to set up, and setting up/positioning yourself well in the resource war is the key to this and the Zoo matchup. There are too many variables; Pact fights the wrong fight. Against Zoo and NLU, you don’t need to full-on go off; you just need to get + a few cards and/or tokens and neuter an “out” of theirs. So drawing 4 and playing a Needle on Explosives, untapping, and killing them across a turn or two seems perfectly fine.

Post-bard against Frank’s Zoo, I went 5-5, but it should have been 4-6 because of a really loose attack with a Tidehollow Sculler where he mis-timed the opportunity to Jund Charm his guy instead of the whole board. I think winning 40% of the time against that hateful of a board is fine with me, and 40% feels about right. I took out 2 Melodies, 4 Pacts for 2 Viridian Shaman, 2 Seal of Primordium, 2 Umezawa’s Jitte, though one Shaman ought to have been an Elvish Champion to provide another victory outlet. I have found that hands down the most important card to resolve in this matchup is Hivemaster, just to play it and do something immediate, whether it’s draw a card, gain a life, or get a 1/1, and then make them kill it. If they don’t kill it they are in severe trouble, but that is true for a lot of cards; if they don’t kill early mana-elves, they risk being buried under a Glimpse. When you test this matchup though it will feel worse than it is because so many of the games they win are just huge, stone blowouts. Like 4 of my 6 losses were to Jund Charm. Meanwhile you’re nickel-and-diming your way up the ladder and rarely comboing (and yes, I tried keeping Pacts in to help me combo, and I didn’t like it because my enabler would die and here was this uncastable spell).

Against Desire I 3-3’d with Stifle and 3-1’d with Thorn of Amethyst. The argument is complex, though. First of all, if Desire does like we do and brings in Brain Freeze versus us, then we’d in some ways want Stifle, obviously – but also, with Thorn you sort of change into a beatdown deck that just kills them whenever, and rarely need to combo in the first place, though you want the option. I thought about bringing in Brain Freeze versus this deck, but I just wanted Entity as the kill because of Tutor purposes. Both plans have their advantages and disadvantages. Mainly, leaving 1 open for Stifle always is extremely awkward, and your opponent has to be a dolt not to realize what is going on. The thing about Thorn is, though, that if they have a Chain of Vapor it’s worse than if you had simply not played a spell and said “go,” because a decent chunk of your deck now costs more, and they’re killing you at Goldfish speed while you just attack on the ground. So I think I like Stifle better despite the looser results, because there is less they can do about it and is more broadly-applicable to other matchups. Still, I think the existing sideboard is the weakest part of the deck and I would LOVE some input. I sided out 4 Hivemaster 1 Essence Warden for 1 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender (the dodge-Firespout aspect won me a game, though it’s worth noting that Thorn delays Firespout by a turn as well – though so can Stifle, if you get a land on the critical turn). I also heard that Saito is transforming his Desire deck into the Deus deck post-sideboard.

Falling asleep, more later…

Zac

From Me:

The fact that I didn’t bring Freeze in against Desire reminded me: what is Brain Freeze good against besides the mirror? If we are exclusively sideboarding the mirror I would again just like 1 Gaea’s Herald X Chalice and say “good game.”

From Me:

I saw an interesting Desire list that sideboards into that Red deck (Magus of the Moon, Blood Moon, Deus of Calamity) the other day. No idea if it’s good, but it’s something we need to keep our mind on.

From Jan:

What’s with people mailing everybody separately… confusing much?

I don’t like Distant Melody that much anymore, it forces you to mulligan more and I rather just play more consistent cards (Visionary, Chord since I have Burrenton in board). I get what you’re trying to say about Pact, but testing versus Zoo showed that at least a couple of times a Pact moved the board situation from ‘doing reasonable’ (but can shift very easily to burn) to ‘winning ding ding.’ I am probably keeping in two (maybe three) versus Zoo. Haven’t really thought about sideboarding versus Blue yet, but I guess I agree you can cut at least 2 Pacts, but the same reasoning as with Zoo also applies to keep a couple in.

The thing that confuses me about NLU and Explosives is that I haven’t seen any list with Explosives yet, and I have no clue how much NLU will be played. Pithing Needle is interesting, but might be a waste if nobody plays Explosives (most of the time they only have Jitte out of the board too), and I’m short on sideboard space – how much Swans, Desire, and NLU do you guys expect, since those are the ‘problem matchups.’

I truly dislike the way you boarded versus Zoo, I would never board in that many expensive cards. I’m definitely running oxidize as artifact kill, with Viridian Shaman and Gaea’s Herald as solution versus Chalice (which I don’t really expect). There may be some talk about Elves between pros, but I don’t think the deck will be very popular if you look at the whole PT attendance.

We tested versus Frank’s Desire post board, +3 Burrenton +3 Stifle +1 Gaddock Teeg, -4 Hivemaster -3 Essence Warden, and Elves lost 4-6, although my gut says it’s probably better than that, considering Desire drew really well during the games (often Chain/Repeal + Firespout + combo or something similar by turn 4), and the fact that we know Elves really well by now and how to play against it; also, Frank’s version seemed truly excellent. The Elves sideboard cards did all prove their worth, Teeg + Burrenton is relatively easy to search to, against which they only have a couple outs; same for Burrenton + Stifle in hand. I also think Stifle will be unexpected, even if you have Breeding Pool, but especially if you just have Birchlore or a sacland.

I am probably not bothering with a sideboard in the mirror, except for maybe one elvish champion (also good versus Doran and possibly NLB or Trinket Goyf). Brain Freeze doesn’t sound really good to me: it’s hard to keep two mana open, and it’s not usable in another matchup.

My sideboard at the moment (main deck same as the one I mailed):

2 Oxidize
1 Viridian Shaman
3 Forge[/author]-Tender”]Burrenton [author name="Forge"]Forge[/author]-Tender
3 Stifle
1 Gaddock Teeg
1 Gaea’s Herald (untested)
2 Chain of Vapor (untested, against swans and possibly need to be changed to cards versus NLB if we expect that more)
1 Elvish Champion (untested)

I definitely don’t have room for Chalice.

Anyway, I am sure one of us or the other Belgians will make Top 8 with this deck.

Ciao

Jan

From Me:

Another option against Zoo, at least, is to keep in a Pact and take out the Breeding Pool, since you’re taking out Melodies, lowering your curve, and they have no means usually of destroying your lands (if they keep/bring in Molten Rain, then pump-the-fist-Yaus!).

Jan: I really, really like that sideboard. And sorry about the mailing list confusion; I tend to just mail whomever impulsively. Excellent point about “Elves within the Pro community versus Elves more generally” also. I have a real problem, in the weeks before a PT, over-analyzing and overestimating any “buzz” I might be hearing. And then overestimating people’s reaction to that buzz. Also, you’ve convinced me to move back to Oxidize.

Re: Brain Freeze, I really respect your reasoning, and that is why I was running Freeze over Entity at first also. However, being able to like turn 3 Chord out Entity turn 4 Bring The Team came up again and again, more than I expected at first. Is there a way we could play both?

Re: Explosives, most of the MagicLeague decklists have them at least in the sideboard, since they are very good versus Zoo. I’d like some way to combat that card, because it truly is a huge blowout. Maybe just 2 Needles instead of the two Chains of Vapor. We have to bring in Burrenton versus Swans anyway, right? We can kold a Chain of Vapor with that guy so he has broader application.

You sure about no Jitte, Jan?

I’m really excited about this deck and have really enjoyed working with y’all on it, as always. See you in Berlin!

Zac

From Frank:

I am currently not sure whether I want to play Zoo or Elves, but I’m starting to lean towards Elves. Did some more testing versus Zoo today (against myself) and the Elves deck was winning. Elves was even beating an active Jitte on turn 2 with Pendelhaven and Wirewood Symbiote. I’m not going to play Swans.

In Zac’s maindeck, I would somehow like to add a third Elvish Visionary. That card has never been bad, adds consistency, and is supreme with Wirewood Symbiote. Probably cut the 2nd Distant Melody, since Jan doesn’t like it.

I like keeping in one or two Pacts versus Zoo and NLU.

Out of Swans, Desire, and NLU, the deck I expect the most is Desire.

I would rather have Brain Freeze over Entity versus Desire, because some Desire builds run Angel’s Grace. Furthermore, sometimes they just run a Desire for 8, and you can respond by milling almost their entire deck and hope to hit their win conditions.

Why does no one have a Caller of the Claw in the board? Seems very good versus sweepers, and one is good to have in a deck with tutors.

When you already have Jittes and Elvish Champion for the mirror, and perhaps Brain Freeze (which I think is good, better than Entity at least in this matchup), you probably don’t need much else. But a nice piece of tech would be Goblin Sharpshooter. Can be tutored up with Chord of Calling and I can’t think of any card that is better at single-handedly shutting down the Elves deck.

Frank

~~

Again, the trouble with lists like these – despite their benefits – emerges, as Caller of the Claw was mentioned a long time ago, but we all just forgot about it until the night before the PT.

~~

From Me:

I am also still a fan of Jitte for one of the reasons Marijn mentioned: it’s good whatever they are doing. But some of the reasons I still want Seal of Primordium over Oxidize are that keeping 1 open for Jitte all the time is hard, it kills Chalice, and it’s good versus Pillar.

From: Frank Karsten

The decks that people are playing on MTGO do have Summoner’s Pact, by the way.

-It does appear that the entire world knows about the Elf deck by now.
-But I’m still not giving out your list.
-And I don’t think anyone will have Jund Charm except for me.

~~

A nice omen about “the entire world knowing,” right? This is the end of our official correspondence, as by now most of us were in Berlin and capable of talking “IRL.” The team went on to innovate Gilt-Leaf Palace and Thoughtseize, a development that I was unfortunately not privy to. For whatever reason I was stricken with an absolutely awful illness on Thursday, and lost consciousness at the “player party” while talking to Darwin Kastle. Stuart had to practically drag me back to the hostel, and so I played the list I posted above minus one Distant Melody and plus one Viridian Shaman. Meanwhile the rest of the team took out the Melodies to support black, went up to three Visionaries, and boarded Thoughtseize over my Jitte and Pithing Needle and Caller of the Claw. I may or may not have run these changes if I had known about them, but in all honesty I doubt it would have mattered; I made five game-losing play errors over the course of the Pro Tour, became ill before at least two matches, and was the recipient of no small miracle to make it into Day 2 at all.

Still, if you ask me, this version of the deck was the best one at the tournament. I like Entity over Predator Dragon because it’s so easy to Chord out on turn 4 if you’re not Comboing, and all of the sudden they’re just dead anyway. The infinite loop is also relevant, though it’s probably a good idea not to kill yourself like I managed to do against Pascal – and thanks, Bill, for letting the world know about that one. Smiley face. But mainly Entity allows you to survive things like Pontiff and Jund Charm and Firespout if for whatever reason you’re not able to kill them immediately or are not Wrathed at instant speed in response to a Chord – and yes, I was able to survive a Pontiff in the Swiss by Chording out my own Mirror Entity and simply making my guys bigger, which was better than growing my creatures with Pontiff because I needed an Entity for the kill and only had one Chord left. Entity is also the total savagery versus things like Rule of Law, which I was 2-0 against on the weekend. Play a guy, play a guy, EOT Chord you and that is. Who says I have to be playing combo?

Four Visionary seems like too many, as they’re quite bad in multiples and you only want so many two-mana spells. Going without Hivemaster is bold for many reasons, but certainly a prime one is that if in the mirror neither of you is able to combo, then without Hivemaster you have just no hope. I particularly like our version if people start running the ManuelB/LSV list, as Gaddock Teeg from our side is really, really good against their Harvests, and even if it hits a couple of our Chords, we’re better positioned for the non-Combo fight.

Aside from all that, though, I hope you enjoyed this article series. It’s taken me two weeks to write and edit, because of the high volume involved, the need to present it coherently, the desire to synthesize and make relevant large quantities of information, and its pure-and-simple length. Rest assured I will be back to Chatters shortly. As a “bonus,” if you somehow just couldn’t get by without reading another word of text from this side of the table, I’ve got the article I penned on the plan to Berlin, which arrived in Craig’s inbox a day too late for publication, but which a couple of you had asked about regardless.

See you next week – on schedule, this time!

Zac

*According to Stuart Wright, the real reason that Dark Confidant is bad in Zoo is that he isn’t an animal, and “a Zoo isn’t a place for humans, it’s a place for animals, dogs and cats and monkeys and whatever a Llhurgoyf is, it looks somewhat like an animal, and these people are putting humans where there should be animals, and no wonder that they’re losing!”

And now muffled rufflings, sounds of a black backpack rustled through and relocated firmly, securely beneath the seat in front of me, tray table upright and chair fully forward at a yes I bet they calculated ninety degree angle. The woman next to me coughs, her veil sort of lurching, not billowing as I imagine you might write if you were not sitting here watching it happen, but rather the brisk recoil of a passenger in an auto-accident. My portable electronic devices are supposed to be turned off, unlike the televisions that even now display Will Smith’s confused and nineties-flat-topped visage opposite an attractive blonde and the caption “Dat lieg je,” whatever that means.

I am an American flying to Amsterdam en route to Berlin from Kuala Lumpur.

Will Smith now two palms forward and innocent, the woman dons sunglasses.

The muted rumble of the airplane’s engines mimic the hour-long static of awakening to a hangover.

People sit packed in ordered rows. Items that spring to mind are dominoes and newly-planted trees. Air recirculates. Hair scrunches against seatbacks and becomes disordered. No babies are crying. The lights less dim than disappear.

One of the things about Malaysia that makes you kind of cock your head to the side as you fail to understand why Malaysia got it before the States is that you can actually pay all of your bills, every single one of them, at a common everyday Malaysian ATM. It’s unreal in the sense that cheerleaders are somehow unreal to your average male high school freshman. You show up with a wad of cash, literally a wad that could be stuffed (as mine was) into your back pocket that anywhere else would elicit suggestions of pharmaceutical-trafficking-without-a-license, this wad that you just order into a little Tetris-brick and place neatly into a like envelope that extends more or less where your lap would be if you were the machine. It counts it, you key in the account number of anyone you owe, and it takes care of the business, as it were. No carting downtown to ship for the utilities. No mailing of letters. No having to deal with the impossibly-slow and ironically-named Roadrunner Broadband, with their three-room office and linoleum flooring.

Point being I had to be shown this system. Point being I had to wait in line to talk to a teller, because you know they are not the type to show up for a chit-chat, little clear plane of plastic both muffling and somehow facilitating conversation. Point being that took time. Point being I was an hour behind, rushing, characteristically, to the shop to grab the cards from Raj. Point being I am writing this article on the plane instead of mailing it to Craig in a timely fashion.

Which segue into Raj and the rest of the Malaysian crew and the point of this article, and aren’t I a deft artisan of prose.

Will Smith just kicked a guy where it hurts.

I don’t mean to talk about the Malaysian crew as some sort of faceless collective. The fact is these guys have been amazing to me, and any success I may have at this Pro Tour I owe to all of them, not only for the testing but for the relative emotional and routine-oriented stability they’ve offered in a place and time where a lizard jumped into my shoe and I just sat there and watched it until it crawled right back out and minded its business, rather like kids playing “fort” with their dad. Where that thing, you know, happens.

It’s Hollywood, Joelle’s a memory by this point and I am sitting down from LSV, round 7. A nice rational discussion about how I’m probably taking some time off the game and he needs the Pro Points and sure would be nice and everything is nice and rational. That’s the jumping of the shark, and though in Day-2 I punt three straight rounds and do not at all want to even be there come the fourth or so turn-1-suspend-a-Visions. Concede to Paul all weary and ready, quite literally, for a nap. Point being that’s when I write a couple of reflective, nicely-reasoned articles about the game and my role within it, contemplate stepping back, re-prioritizing, taking into account the big picture.

If I’d only known.

The five or so months since then have been filled with my most intense Magic schedule in years. This emerged purely by accident. First, two months in Madison, the American Magic Mecca, and how could I avoid almost constant battle? Then here, where everyone I know plays and a new set is released and you’ve got to kill a day after work when you have work the next day and you’re aching for a trip to Berlin and somewhere, maybe this is the root of it all but somewhere, deep inside, you’re unsatisfied with being a sun that’s setting before it’s ever risen, one of those muted white dwarfs out there in the cosmos with a name like “Urlacher 27-f,” giving it all up when I know just know there’s something sparkling there not worth casting to the side and discarding like the wrapper from a melted chocolate bar. And, no doubt, the clinging to familiarity in a world turned upside down, which maybe even I shouldn’t have, the easy dialogue and easy friendships and simple commonalities of experience that only coincidentally (?) have blossomed into real, meaningful exchanges.

Point being, I’ve played a lot. A lot like the frequency of Magic I didn’t know you could actually play. A lot like more games in the last five months than in the last five years – though that probably says more about the years than the months. I guarantee you that for two years I played less Magic than anyone “regularly” on the ‘Tour. At the Show, as DFW would say. A year or so ago I opined that if I drafted as much as Alex Kim did at the time there would be no way I could ever lose. I’m playing the best Magic of my life, in a sense, and yet I’m still losing. This article is an attempt to discover why.

First, though, a note: what is most pleasing to me about Berlin is the fact that, very much unlike Hollywood, I feel like I’ve contributed tremendously to our testing group, like some fundamental pieces of technology, theories, and ideas, and potentially even the bulk of the two maindecks that most of us are considering sleeving up. I won’t say “most,” because it’s been a multifaceted effort, the incredible raw data-mining of Frank mixed with the ingenuity and almost ritualized testing finesse of the Belgians – but it’s enough to renew my faith in a Constructed mind that for the last year has been more or less sagging under the weight of inaction. I spoke last week, and talked extensively with Anna, about how it was really bothering me that for some reason I kept getting angry and frustrated with Magic matches on a level that I thought I had put behind me. I couldn’t figure out why this was, since it wasn’t as if I was confronting new, previously-misunderstood burdens or whatever. It was the quite literal same-old. I was feeling unfulfilled at the testing process, irritated when matches wouldn’t go my way, bothered by variance and luck, and perhaps worst of all actually making more errors because of tilt, tilt which I acknowledged but could not make go away. I also was asking the standard questions when I looked to testing as a kind of necessary burden rather like the clipping of toenails or the taking out of trash: am I really making the most out of my stay in Malaysia by playing Magic?

I am not even close to irritated at asking the questions. But I’m amazed at how long it took me to arrive at the proper conclusion. At first, I thought I was becoming more emotionally invested in the game because it occupied a greater proportion of my time, emotional energy, competitive fulfillment, etc. This isn’t exactly untrue, but it fails to really address the heart of the issue, like I’d worked through the thought process but had ridden the subway all the way back to the station I’d started at in the first place. The second realization was a step above that one but still, at its core, the same – that my circle had shrunken considerably, that what used to be routine contact with people in half the states and its elite universities and hundreds and hundreds of networks and a dozen extracurriculars and a fulfilling job and literally parties or storytellings four nights a week and constant competition and validation, a circle almost impossibly large, a sphere of influence giant and expanding, that this sphere had been set aside for a moment rather like a bottle of Windex before window-wiping and replaced with a sphere I could literally count on my four primary appendages, or at least on those of myself and a conjoined twin. That in an entire nation maybe forty people tops had any reason to believe that I existed. That because my bubble was smaller, Magic occupied a bigger part of it.

Again, true, but not there.

As usual, the problem was more structural.

Look at that sentence in italics. “Making the most of.” As in, a hierarchy of scale. Prioritizing, rating, ranking. As in not doing something particularly worthwhile. Let’s paraphrase that for a moment:

“Are you really making the most out of your life by flying to exotic locations on someone else’s dollar, competing in front of the eyes of thousands for the chance to win a truly life-altering sum of money*?”

I had become placated. Content. Disenchanted. Placid.

Flaccid.

For lack of a better term.

It would not surprise me if I received a letter in the mail from a psychologist informing me that, in addition to a truly offensive dose of Narcissism, I also possessed one of the most acute cases of dissatisfaction and diminishing returns he had ever seen. The error I had committed was assuming I was at a certain “level,” in the Magic pantheon or whatever passes for it, and so any work executed was sort of a maintenance chore, an exercise in tedium. That my frustration in losing was the realization of a disconnect between where I thought I was and what my performance was indicating. The error, of course, being the construction of this idea that what I “am” as a Magic player is somehow independent of where I perform, that I have some sort of right to be esteemed X amount for Y amount of history and Z amount of abstract ability, whatever that means. As a certain detractor of mine would gleefully point out, a sense of, say, entitlement. Thus the frustration. And thus the illusion that I was “wasting time” playtesting: I was satisfied with my teammates and the public’s perception of my ability, I was making good arguments, and so what was there to prove?

As if my value was derived from something else but me.

I am coming to realize that the hardest thing in life is to make ourselves vulnerable, to open ourselves up to the possibility of failure, to close off prematurely anything that would cause us to have a stake in something. I had forgotten how lucky I was to be doing the things I was doing, to be working with people who were formerly idols and to understand on the highest level a game so beautiful and complex and fascinating in its never-ending possibility. To be amongst the best in the world at something.

I have no idea how I am going to do in Berlin. Our deck is savage and we have worked hard. But I am comfortable now saying that we have invested labor and time, and I will let the result speak for itself, and that whatever that finish may turn out to be, it will be exactly that: a finish. A result in the books. Not a value system, a vindication or condemnation of, my worth or my abstract ability.

But one of the things I have noticed about this constant Magic-playing has been a shift in the overall framework from which I approach games as I sit down at the table, and I wanted to touch briefly on what this is and the impact it has on all of us as the frequency of our match-playing ebbs and flows. I have talked at length with Adrian about the psychology of a given match, what is going on in the heads of the players. I’ve basically determined that there are two schematics we use when playing to help determine the course of our decisions: the generative schema and the experiential one.

Both of these systems are good at different things. The generative schema is very good at adapting to new information. It takes a game state and looks at it freshly, pondering every decision and developing a landscape of how the game will move forward, constructing a plan and an outlook and a sense of how you want things to happen. This system is very good in that you cannot really every operate on autopilot with it, because you’re sitting there considering every little variable. The problem, of course, is that the more things you construct and the more little scenarios you try to envision being played out, the less accurate your depiction is going to be because 1) there’s hidden information, obviously; 2) your opponent may not play like you do, and 3) there is a limit to the human capacity for projection.

The experiential schema looks backward rather than forward, constructing a course of action based on what has worked in the past and what interactions have proved most valuable. This approach is tremendously valuable because it is scientific, and has an exponentially greater tendency to be accurate because all of the projections have been backed up by empirical realities. Adrian actually calls this the “empiricist” approach for that reason. It basically asks “what has happened?” not “what should happen?” Compare almost every set-release prediction about hot-or-nots to the relative play each card earns within the respective season for evidence of how one system of thought can yield much greater accuracy than another.

This approach has a problem, though, in that it’s seductive in its automatic allure. Your brain gets into this cycle of computation, essentially, as opposed to generation. Because of that you tend to fail against cards or interactions you had not previously seen, because your brain is no longer used to having to use that switch of “oh I haven’t seen this before let’s stop and make some well-reasoned conclusions about what is likely to happen.” The empirical approach has become so automatic it has forgotten how to turn itself off when it becomes the subpar means of evaluation.

Because of this discrepancy between systems, I definitely lost two games at this last week’s Grand Prix trial, one to a Hell’s Thunder and one to a Prince of Thralls, because I didn’t understand how to properly evaluate both cards under the oh-so-famous scale of “What Matters,” when I would have been able not close to do so had I played with the cards and had the relevant experience to draw upon those past games. You have to have to have to be careful of this tendency to autopilot, if you’re at all a developing Magic player looking to take your game to the next level. It’s the single biggest impediment to greatness, the assumption (passive or not) that you have seen and done it all.

The moral of the story this week, it seems, is to control your ego.

Wish me luck in Berlin!

Zac

*And we are disenchanted by the lack of a Pro Tour to round off the season, the decreased payouts of Nationals etc., but anyone who claims that a sudden and immediate injection of US $40,000 isn’t life-altering has got a life that is probably in need of some radical alteration.