The date: Thursday night. The setting: My dining room. Six Magic players are sitting around a large wooden table, testing out decks, playing Magic, trying to finalize their decisions before Saturday’s Regional Championships.
Five of them have a very real idea of the deck they are playing.
One does not.
And that one, of course, is me.
I’ll be honest. It was mostly my own fault. I get distracted easily. That, and nothing really stood out as “interesting” to me. If I’m going to play eight or nine rounds of Magic, you’d best believe I’m going to find something that will still be fun by round 7. I tinkered with a Black-Red control deck, I poked at a Red-Green aggro deck, but generally my job was to play the bad-guy side: proxying up BW Tokens, which, according to the Internetz, was going to be 80% of the metagame. I was never going to play BW Tokens – I don’t think there are any White Ajanis in Colorado Springs AT ALL – so it was coming down to the wire.
I think I even put something on Twitter trying to get recommendations.
I was leaning towards playing Black-Red aggro, hoping to ride the back of Anathemancer to victory, when I mentioned to one of the other players, Brian, that all I really wanted to do was make big creatures and attack all day. It’s the easiest way to endure an extended tournament – play a deck where the hardest decision you need to make is which direction to tap your creatures when you attack. Brian mentioned that he had a deck built but wasn’t actually planning on going to Regionals.
And it made big creatures.
GW Golden Fatties, deck by Brian Naujoks, played by Dave Meeson at Regionals 2009
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Bant Sureblade
4 Dauntless Escort
4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
2 Knight of New Alara
4 Path to Exile
2 Wrath of God
2 Sigil Blessing
2 Behemoth Sledge
4 Wooded Bastion
4 Brushland
4 Treetop Village
6 Plains
6 Forest
Sideboard:
3 Avatar of Might
3 Runed Halo
3 Gaddock Teeg
3 Celestial Purge
2 Hurricane
1 Wrath of God
I’m skipping the rare cost summary; you can see that the biggest cost is the Noble Hierarchs ($15) and the Wilt-Leaf Lieges ($10) … the rare lands, the Knights are fairly cheap, Wraths aren’t critical but should be a part of every player’s collection – even the Dauntless Escorts, popular as they are, are only six bucks. And having played the deck now in one tournament, I’m going to cut the rares down even further for GP: Seattle … but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s answer some pressing questions.
Why Bant Sureblade? With just about every non-land permanent in the deck being multicolored, Bant Sureblade is going to be a 3/2 first-striker for 2 mana in most circumstances. This isn’t just critical from an aggressive standpoint, but it’s also critical in fighting some of the other aggressive creatures in the format – any of the tramplers like Hellspark Elemental, and 3-toughness guys with deadly abilities, like Boggart Ram-Gang or Wren’s Run Vanquisher. I will be honest – he was the man I was least sure about in this deck, but he was a great early drop all day long. And he also caused a lot of people to pick him up and read him.
Why Knight of New Alara? Similar to Bant Sureblade, this guy gets better because of all the multicolored permanents in the deck. He’s essentially Wilt-Leaf Lieges numbers five and six, with the downside of not protecting your Noble Hierarchs, but with the upside of improving the bonus your Bant Sureblade gets. He’s a little more fragile than Wilt-Leaf Liege, dying to Volcanic Fallout, but the offensive boost is worth it, especially as it gives you a better chance of getting two of them on the board.
Why Sigil Blessing? The Dauntless Escort goes a long way towards protecting your team from sweepers, but again, it’s a matter of redundancy. It’s a good combat trick as well that can turn creature trades into a blowout. It also can give you a push in for the final damage.
The sideboard has Avatar of Might for any of the tokens flavors, Runed Halo for Five-Color Control (on Banefire) and Sanity Grinding, Gaddock Teeg as another Wrath protector, Celestial Purge for anything Red or with Bitterblossom, and Hurricane for Faeries and Tokens. The sideboard probably needs adjustments, but I did end up sideboarding every single card at one point or another.
The drive up to Denver was relatively uneventful. Since the other boys had all made up their minds, we were able to discuss the deck and make some minor adjustments (adding in the Wraths, adjusting the manabase to include the Brushland) and built the sideboard. We arrived in Denver and were met with a conference room filled to exploding with hopeful Magic players.
Round 1 versus Jay playing BW Tokens
Playing the 80% Metagame Choice in round 1 is probably likely, although it does nothing to assuage one of the mental image of playing against it for the next ten hours. Let’s face it, it’s a bad matchup. They make hundreds of chump blockers. I make big guys who are willing to run into chump blockers in perpetuity. I’ve got two options: find the Wrath plus Dauntless Escort combo to sneak in damage, or get a Sledge on the board and keep an attacker around long enough to push through damage.
Neither of those happen in game 1. Jay resolves an early Bitterblossom, and you know it’s bad when the only damage you do to your opponent is via your Noble Hierarch sneaks in for a point of damage somewhere in the midgame. Jay eventually drops a second Bitterblossom to speed things up.
In game 2, I have a one and a two drop, and when Jay plays a turn 2 Bitterblossom, I present the Sledge answer to the chump-blocker problem. Of course, that’s dependent on keeping a creature on the board, which I fail at doing, and Jay’s Bitterblossom pushes him closer to his own death — but closer to mine as well. He finally gets down to 5 from his Bitterblossoms and painlands, and I have a Hurricane in hand with four lands and a Noble Hierarch in play. I’m excited to kill him, but for some reason, spite I think, he kills the Hierarch! I magically draw the fifth land to Hurricane him down to 1, where his Bitterblossom finishes the job.
Game 3 I keep attackers to go with my Sledge, and while I’m continuously attacking, Jay keeps making numerous blockers to take down my attackers as they come. The Sledge carries me up to 46 life but I’m nickel-and-diming damage through, and finally Jay finds Ajani to help his Air Force start taking chunks out of my growing life total. We get called on time with him at 1 life, and the Hurricane waiting on top on turn 1 is the nail in his coffin.
1-0
Round 2 versus Will playing Sanity Grinding
There are two other Springs guys sitting at the table next to us, and I’m telling the story about how I killed my last opponent using Hurricane. Will, for whatever reason, does not believe me. I can’t see why – Hurricane is a logically sensible option for today’s deckbuilder! Will offers to pay me five dollars if I play a Hurricane against him.
I think you know I will take that bet.
This is one deck that I just don’t understand. I mean, I get how it works, but it’s not for me. It must be effective against creature-based decks, though, because my notes don’t even record me doing any damage to him, which is a little surprising. He finds one Sanity Grinding, and then another to dump my whole deck into my graveyard.
I side in Gaea’s Blessing. Not really, I side in Gaddock Teeg and Runed Halo. But none of it matters, as Will gets stuck on three land in games 2 and 3, and even the Bottle Gnomes he sided in weren’t enough to buffer him into his fourth land.
The saddest part of the match, however, is that I have a Hurricane in hand, but don’t have a chance to play it in the third game! I would have put that five dollars to good use.
2-0
Round 3 versus Parker playing Mono-White Kithkin
Young Parker is playing in his first Regionals, having just started playing the game a few months ago. In game 1, I take care of an early Knight of Meadowgrain and get the upper hand with a Kitchen Finks and a Treetop Village before we get a little stalemate thanks to three Spectral Processions in a row, but eventually I’m able to clear out his chump blockers and take him from 15 to zero in one Sigil-Blessing-fueled swoop.
Games 2 and 3 go to Parker, however. He curves out as expected in game 2, and I can’t handle his second Figure of Destiny which goes up to Kirstie Alley size and flies over my forces to land the final blow. In game three, I forget to draw creatures in my creature deck and draw all removal. It’s great when I sweep away Spectral tokens with a Hurricane, and I have two Wraths for his first two Cloudgoat Rangers. It’s the third one, one after another, that I am unable to handle and that does me in.
2-1
Round 4 versus Shane playing Faeries
Evidently Shane doesn’t have the Internetz where he lives, which must be up in the mountains or something, because no one told him that Faeries is a dead archetype that is hanging up the boots.
No?
I will admit to having a mental block against Faeries. This matchup goes pretty much how you expect, as the same philosophy applies as to BW Tokens: Get a Sledge on the board and active, and you can start bashing through the chump blockers. Unfortunately, it’s about thirty times harder against Faeries because they can actually have some input into whether you resolve that Sledge or not. My scoresheet has, literally, three non-Bitterblossom amounts of damage that I dealt to Shane.
2-2
Round 5 versus Paul playing Bant
Reeling from the beating laid upon me with Faeries, I figure I still need to finish this tournament out, even though I’m likely out of the competition for the Nationals slots. I’m pushed on by the hopes of gaining enough ratings point to pick up a one-round bye in Seattle, where I’m headed to over the Memorial Day weekend (and will stay the week to play in GP: Seattle).
Paul keeps a questionable hand for game 1, consisting of a Forest and a Mystic Gate for lands, and after failing to hit a Blue or White source in the first few draws, quickly concedes in the face of a Kitchen Finks-fueled beatdown.
In the second game, though, I get to see how the deck operates, as a big Rhox War Monk takes five-point chunks out of my life. I finally take care of it, but a Stoic Angel (that’s new) limits my offensive style and finishes the job.
The third game is all mine, though, with multiple Wilt-Leaf Lieges pumping a Kitchen Finks up to ludicrous size and taking Paul down.
3-2
Round 6 versus Andrew playing Five-Color Reveillark
Yes, you see that correctly. Five-color Reveillark. I don’t think I ever seen this style, and it appears that it’s mostly to ride the coattails of Anathemancer, who works a nice partnership with Reveillark. Andrew finds all four Anathemancers in game 1; unfortunately, that’s ALL he finds, and since I’ve only got a Treetop Village and a Brushland for Anathemancer to work with, it’s not enough.
He sideboards a LOT of cards against me, and that worries me. In comes Stillmoon Cavalier and Story Circle, and both make an appearance in games 2 and 3, locking out most of my offense and giving Andrew time to find threats and, when I finally handle those, a Reveillark to seal the deal.
3-3
Round 7 versus Stina playing Merfolk
I need some victories now, or I’m looking at “break even” on my quest for DCI points.
Stina is playing the seventh different deck in seven rounds against me, which is nuts. She starts out with a pair of Silvergill Adepts, which act as decent speedbumps against the incoming hordes, and Sygg, River Guide after that threatens to shut down my team, providing she finds some more blockers to protect. Unfortunately, she makes an error when blocking my incoming Bant Sureblade, naming ‘Blue’ for Sygg’s protection, which lets me Path him out of the way. She mounts another force with a pair of Reejereys, but I use Sigil Blessing to make combat go my way, reducing her back to chump blocking before finally overtaking her.
In the second game, I have a fast start, and Stina is never really able to keep up. She does play a Meddling Mage in a desperation move; I try and coach her into naming Wrath of God, but she goes for Wilt-Leaf Liege, leaving the two Wraths in my hand as live cards.
4-3
Round 8 versus Chris playing Black-Red
I am happy to finally see a Mountain on the other side of the board, as this is one of my good matchups. My creatures are bigger, and my lifegain is tremendous against a deck designed to do 20 damage, and not much more.
In game 1, I speed out of the gates with big creatures, and Chris is stuck playing smaller guys. Game 2 turns on a Sigil Blessing turning Volcanic Fallout one sided, letting me keep two Bant Sureblades and a Knight of New Alara while his entire board is removed.
5-3
Thoughts Post-Regionals
Man, I really want some way to break through the waves of chump-blockers. Trample is a great ability in this metagame, and I immediately started looking at other tramplers to include. I mean, I’m to the point where I’m trying to figure out if Talara’s Battalion is playable. GW Tokens has its signature Overrun, but the trick with that is to tuck it under a Windbrisk Heights, which they can easily trigger.
So I’m thinking I might try and include Overrun somehow in the GP Seattle build, but I want a way to get free mid-combat Overruns myself. I’m actually thinking Mosswort Bridge ($1.50) is a possibility. I found that getting 10 power worth of creatures was a lot easier than having three attackers, especially with Knight of New Alara, who rarely enters combat himself (but who makes triggering Mosswort Bridge easy).
Also, in the face of having more comes-into-play-tapped lands in the deck, I’m thinking about trying out Steward of Valeron in the place of Noble Hierarch. He works with so many parts of the deck, is able to play offense and defense, provides the right mana boost (and the necessary green for hardcasting Overrun), and just seems like a better offensive choice. Mid-game Steward is a potential threat when backed up by one of the pumpers; Noble Hierarch only works with one of them, and only gets to be a 1/2.
The sideboard definitely needs work, but I’m going to wait to see what all comes out of Regionals before I make any concrete decisions. But here’s the deck as I might run it in Seattle.
Creatures (21)
- 4 Wilt-Leaf Liege
- 4 Steward of Valeron
- 3 Qasali Pridemage
- 2 Knight of New Alara
- 4 Dauntless Escort
- 4 Bant Sureblade
Lands (24)
Spells (11)
I hope you all had a great time at your Regionals, and we’ll see what comes out of these first big Standard tournaments in the weeks to come. Next week, we’ll head back into the budget before I jet off to Seattle.
(Well, “car off” technically, as I’m driving.)
Until next week…
Dave
dave dot massive at gmail and facebook and twitter