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Today I will talk about the last two Grand Prix tournaments in which I played – Barcelona and Seattle - and I’ll share a deck that I tested in between these two events.

I arrived in Barcelona two days before the tournament, and I was sure that I would be playing the Turbo-Fog deck.

I reached this decision as I expected a lot of Spectral Procession token decks - against which Turbo-Fog is a huge favourite - and a small amount of everything else. For reference, here is the decklist:

Oli Day / Oling Mine Featured by Olivier Ruel, Manuel Bucher, and Antoine Ruel on 2009-05-31 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17550_Reflecting_Ruel_Intelligent_Netdecking_2_Turbo_Fog_in_Barcelona.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 4 Fieldmist Borderpost 3 Font of Mythos 4 Howling Mine 2 Pithing Needle Enchantments 3 Runed Halo Instants 4 Angelsong 4 Cryptic Command 4 Holy Day 4 Negate 4 Pollen Lullaby	Planeswalkers 4 Jace Beleren Basic Lands 12 Island 7 Plains Lands 1 Mystic Gate	Sideboard: 3 Glen Elendra Archmage 3 Meddling Mage 2 Wheel of Sun and Moon 3 Celestial Purge 2 Hindering Light 2 Path to Exile
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

I ended up losing rounds 4 and 6 to a Jund-Based Aggro deck with lots of disruption (Thoughtseize, Thought Hemorrhage, Primal Command, and Maelstrom Pulse... And one of them even had Naya Charms). I won rounds 5, 7, and 8 against token based decks – two Black/White and one Green/White splashing for Maelstrom Pulse and Doran, the Siege Tower. In the match against the Green/White Doran deck, he started game 2 with Pithing Needle into Gaddock Teeg. As I didn’t sideboard my Path to Exile, my only out was to attack with Glen Elendra Archmage. I thought about conceding through time issues, but then I decided to see how the first few turns play out. I resolved several Howling Mines and could start attacking with an Archmage. I ended up winning the game, dealing twenty damage. I lost my final round to Swans after winning game 1 easily, getting crushed in the other two.

I still think the deck was an excellent deck choice for that tournament, but after the Top 8 was announced, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t run the deck in Seattle.

The Swans deck was easy to beat pre-board, but the post-board games were really hard – this is something you can work on, and with a good sideboard plan you should be able to keep the matchup in your favour.

But the results from the tournament allowed Faeries to become such a good metagame choice that playing Fog wouldn’t be a good idea. That matchup is so bad that Antoine Ruel conceded after he lost game 1, rather than playing another tormenting game.

But enough talk about Fog... You already read enough about it in Olivier’s last article.

In Seattle, I started building a Green/Blue based control deck, which posted really good results against Swans both pre- and post-board. This is the first list I played.

Five-Color Control Featured by Manuel Bucher on 2009-06-07 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17562_Positive_EV_Barcelona_and_Seattle.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 1 Pithing Needle Creatures 3 Plumeveil Enchantments 4 Fertile Ground	Instants 4 Broken Ambitions 4 Cryptic Command Planeswalkers 4 Garruk Wildspeaker 4 Jace Beleren 2 Liliana Vess 1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker Sorceries 3 Tidings 4 Wrath of God Basic Lands 2 Forest 4 Island Lands 2 Flooded Grove 2 Mystic Gate 4 Reflecting Pool 4 Vivid Creek 4 Vivid Grove 2 Vivid Meadow 2 Wooded Bastion	Sideboard: 2 Pithing Needle 3 Broodmate Dragon 4 Cloudthresher 4 Negate 2 Firespout
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As I played most of my games on Magic Online, I couldn’t really choose what to test against. But I wanted to know how the deck performed in a random field.

I had a lot of success against Swans, which was by far the deck I faced most often, losing only one match and a few games against it. The Swans deck has a lot of trouble fighting against countermagic and Plumeveils. My opponents didn’t have the Land Destruction sideboard plan, as LSV and GerryT did in Barcelona, so their sideboarded cards weren’t giving them a lot of advantage as I was able to concentrate on their creatures if I had a Negate or a Pithing Needle to fight their Seismic Assault.

Reveillark was another very good matchup. Most of their guys just don’t have as much impact on the board as your Planeswalkers, and you should be able to keep most of their threads off the table with your countermagic. Keep in mind that you should name Glen Elendra Archmage with your Pithing Needle.

Elves is a pretty good matchup too. Most of their threats are easy to deal with, and your big mana spell (Tidings) trumps their Profane Command easily. Your sideboard gives you access to Broodmate Dragons and Firespouts, which are both really good cards against the deck.

Green/White was a lot tougher, but is still a reasonable matchup. A turn in which you play Garruk Wildspeaker followed up by Wrath of God should almost always be Game Over. On the other hand, a Gaddock Teeg always kills you, as long as they don’t attack with it into Plumeveil. This is one of the reasons I added Maelstrom Pulse and a mass removal mix of Firespout and Wrath of God.

Black/White was a matchup with which I was a bit disappointed when I played against it. Bitterblossoms, Spectral Procession, and Cloudgoat Ranger all require a mass removal spell. Your Planeswalkers don’t have a huge impact on the board, as the villain’s deck is very resilient to them. After adding several Maelstrom Pulses and cutting some Planeswalkers, I played some live games with the deck and had some promising results.

Faeries is a very troublesome matchup, but not like the Fae/Fog battle... You can actually win this match. But even after sideboarding, you have a lot of trouble fighting Mistbind Clique, as both Maelstrom Pulse and Wrath of God are really bad answers.

I expected to be a favorite against any Five-Color deck, but I ended up losing a match to the deck list played by the runner-up at GP Barcelona. The matchup is actually much closer than I expected, as the current Five-Color Control lists have a lot of cheap countermagic, which is very good against your big mana spells.

This is the list I had the day before the Grand Prix.

Five-Color Control Featured by Manuel Bucher on 2009-06-07 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17562_Positive_EV_Barcelona_and_Seattle.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Pithing Needle Creatures 3 Mulldrifter 2 Plumeveil Enchantments 4 Fertile Ground	Instants 2 Broken Ambitions 4 Cryptic Command Planeswalkers 2 Ajani Vengeant 4 Garruk Wildspeaker 1 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker Sorceries 2 Firespout 3 Maelstrom Pulse 4 Tidings 2 Wrath of God Basic Lands 4 Island Lands 1 Cascade Bluffs 3 Flooded Grove 2 Mystic Gate 4 Reflecting Pool 1 Sunken Ruins 4 Vivid Creek 4 Vivid Grove 2 Vivid Meadow	Sideboard: 1 Pithing Needle 2 Broodmate Dragon 4 Cloudthresher 4 Negate 1 Ajani Vengeant 1 Firespout 2 Wrath of God
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The deck is very solid, and I usually ended up winning two out of three matches. Sadly, this is not good enough to win a GP. Still, I decided to run this deck until a Swiss friend of mine, Andreas Ganz, contacted me with a decklist based on Patrick Chapin’s 5CB... including Sygg, River Cutthroat.

Sygg, River Cutthroat...

Sygg, River Cutthroat!

That’s all I could think about for a while. For some reason, I like the card a lot. I even played Faeries right after LSV played this guy in the deck.

After Patrick played with the card in a few games, he agreed that this is the Syggest card for the deck. [Jees, that one stinks... – Craig, amused.]

I decided to run the deck. Not only do I like Sygg, River Cutthroat, it also seems like a deck that’s powerful enough to win a tournament.

I made a few changes to Patrick’s decklist (or, as a reference, Michael Jacob’s list), and ended up playing the following.

Five-Color Blood Featured by Manuel Bucher on 2009-06-07 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/standard/17562_Positive_EV_Barcelona_and_Seattle.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Anathemancer 4 Bloodbraid Elf 4 Boggart Ram-Gang 4 Putrid Leech Instants 2 Bituminous Blast 4 Cryptic Command 4 Volcanic Fallout Legendary Creatures 3 Sygg, River Cutthroat Planeswalkers 2 Ajani Vengeant	Sorceries 4 Maelstrom Pulse Basic Lands 1 Forest 1 Mountain 1 Swamp Lands 2 Cascade Bluffs 1 Exotic Orchard 2 Flooded Grove 4 Reflecting Pool 3 Twilight Mire 3 Vivid Crag 3 Vivid Grove 4 Vivid Marsh	Sideboard: 2 Pithing Needle 4 Kitchen Finks 1 Necrogenesis 1 Bituminous Blast 2 Celestial Purge 3 Magma Spray 2 Thought Hemorrhage
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I added some Ajani Vengeants, as they seem to help you a lot when you lose too much life with Volcanic Fallout or Putrid Leech. It is also an answer to an opponent’s Chameleon Colossus, or an enabler for Sygg, River Cutthroat. I liked the card a lot, and if you are running something similar I advise you to give the card a try.

All the games but one I played with the decks were blowouts; either I won easily, or I got crushed. This might have been due to variance issues, or because the mana is less stable with one Vivid land less and a pair of Volcanic Fallouts over Jund Charms. Antoine Ruel, playing the same list as me, had similar issues, while the people playing Patrick’s identical list didn’t have any at all.

In the feature match in round 8 against Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa, I mentioned that I would sideboard out Cryptic Command every single round. I have to admit that I didn’t do any playtesting with the deck, but during the rounds I played, the card was too hard to cast for what it did. Most of the time it was only a two-for-one, which doesn’t sound that exciting when you are already running Bituminous Blast, Bloodbraid Elf, and Sygg, River Cutthroat. On the other hand, I had a really hard time deciding when I should keep Cryptic Command mana up when the board was even, or whether I should be creating a bigger board presence with the sorcery-speed core.

In the end, I wasn’t very happy with the deck, as it doesn’t fit my playstyle, and the manabase is a little too greedy for my taste. If you feel comfortable with an opening hand like the following, I suggest you try the deck.

Vivid Marsh
Vivid Marsh
Flooded Grove
Putrid Leech
Boggart Ram-Gang
Cryptic Command
Bituminous Blast

I played following matches during that tournament:

Round 4: G/W 2-1
Round 5: Reveillark 0-2
Round 6: Jund 2-1
Round 7: Mirror 2-1
Round 8: Faeries 2-1
Round 9: G/W 1-2
Round 10: Jund 0-2
Round 11: Elves 1-2
Round 12: Faeries 0-2

At this point, I am very uncomfortable with the current standard, and I have no idea yet what I will be running in Sao Paolo. Faeries seem to be the king again, and I can’t draw a picture yet as to how this affects the metagame in Brazil. What would I do if I had to play in a Standard tournament tomorrow? I would probably play something very similar to the runner-up list from Barcelona, with some tweaks against Faeries.

I ended up making Day 2 at Tacoma, but I lost the first three rounds on that day, after which I dropped from the tournament. As the same happened to Steve Sadin, we decided to go for a walk and search for a restaurant.

After walking for a few blocks and noticing that every restaurant was closed, we decided to ask somebody where we could find what we were looking for.

Sadly, the streets in Tacoma are pretty empty on a sunny Sunday.

After a few minutes, we saw a guy watching people unloading a truck, and we decided to take the opportunity and ask for his advice.

Steve: “How is it going?”
Random Guy: “Hey, what’s up?”
Steve: “Do you know where we can find a restaurant that is open on Sunday?”

There was a moment of silence.

Then the Random Guy started laughing out loud for several seconds.

After he finished the priceless laughing, he told us that there was a McDonalds about two blocks away. After walking for a little longer, we finally found a sign for a Japanese place which claimed to be open seven days a week. Sadly, the Japanese place ended up being closed as well, and we ate at the Mexican restaurant close to it. It was a journey that deserved a rest in the steam room.

I’ve just arrived in Honolulu, and we are shopping and playtesting for the upcoming Pro Tour. Hopefully, you will read some sweet stories from Hawaii next week!

Thanks for reading.

Manu B