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The Surprising True Story of How You, Too, Can Beat Jace, the Mind Sculptor… Without Jace, the Mind Sculptor! Also, Why I Am An Idiot.

“Nice job, Idiot.”

That's what Josh said to me when the PTQ results came out.

I had, once again, produced the Secret Deck for US Nationals.

Some of the past forays into secrecy were less-than-secret, yet ultimately awesome (Kibler's Top 8, Josh's Top 8); and if there is one thing I am good for, it's a good deck for US Nationals (the “ deck that never was” notwithstanding).

“What did I do now?”

“Have you seen the PTQ results? At least he didn't win.”

Josh directed me to the Magic Online website. The second-place deck was a kick to the cack.

“I mean bravo. Nice job playing out in the open.”

Mono-White Eldrazi A Standard deck, by rinazina 2nd place at a Pro Tour Qualifier tournament in Magic Online on 2010-06-13 Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Dreamstone Hedron 4 Everflowing Chalice 2 Expedition Map Artifact Creatures 3 Pilgrim's Eye Creatures 4 Wall of Omens Instants 4 Path to Exile	Legendary Creatures 1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn 3 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre Sorceries 3 Day of Judgment 4 Survival Cache Tribal Sorceries 4 All Is Dust Basic Lands 15 Plains Lands 4 Eldrazi Temple 4 Kabira Crossroads 1 Tectonic Edge Legendary Lands 1 Eye of Ugin	Sideboard: 4 Kor Firewalker 3 Kor Sanctifiers 2 World Queller 4 Celestial Purge 1 Rest for the Weary 1 Day of Judgment
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

Then-new acolyte KYT had begged to be able to test the deck, ideally to play it in Canadian Nationals. I refused him; Secret Deck was nigh unbeatable at the time (we didn't know what M11 was going to bring).

It all started when I was playing some matches with KYT and DougP that would end up on KYT's website, ManaDeprived.com.

I was playing a U/W Eldrazi deck that I had ported from San Juan Block results, and they were making fun of me as I struggled against a Mono-White Control deck.

I didn't struggle in the sense that I wasn't ultimately going to beat him. I was inevitably going to beat him. His Emerias and so on might be inevitable in another universe, but my sense was that there is no way Mono-White Control could beat Jace, the Mind Sculptor going long.

So he pulled out every trick.

It was really quite impressive.

Oblivion Ring your Jace. Okay, I play another Jace. Pick up my Oblivion Ring with a 2/3 flier.

Stuff like that, over and over. Every single trick he could pull, like that.

It was kind of like a master class in how worthless traditional card advantage is relative to Stage Theory. He was getting all kinds of card advantage in the moment—often sniping Jace, the Mind Sculptor himself—and it wasn't going to matter when everything finished up.

The problem was that even if he contained all my Jace action, summoned up every ounce of willpower to stay even with the then-uncrowned king of Standard, he was still going to lose to my Eldrazi mana engine and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre.

I played a lot of queues back then. My wife thought I was crazy. I'm typically up until 2 am doing various… writing, brewing, watching television; but after I qualified for US Nationals, I became something else. I explained to her that my previous level of preparation was not quite good enough to guarantee victory on the local level. How so the National stage? I played a lot of queues back then and learned to draft (unfortunately, I accidentally learned to draft Rise of the Eldrazi instead of M11, which was the relevant format, which, again, hadn't come out yet).

One thing I noticed, especially as Red Decks waxed in popularity, was that my Kor Firewalkers were inconsistent. It was not difficult to see why. I had a two-color deck with half-a-dozen Eldrazi lands (colorless) and basic Island… WW on turn 2 was anything but a certainty.

More and more people were adopting Mono-Red.

I came back to this idea of Mono-White Control. If people are going to play Goblin Guides and Ball Lightnings… I mean that deck is good against the Bant decks, right?

I mean… How am I supposed to beat Jace?

I realized that I could let people beat themselves with Jace. If there is one thing I've built into countless corner-case decks, it's the ability to let people play themselves into a situation where they think they're winning but can never win. Could I really put on such a burgle? Could I trick someone with Jace in play?

The answer is that not only could I do that, but I could consistently smash them for multiple planeswalkers.

You see, in the pre-M11 Standard, U/W was a top deck… but Mana Leak had not yet been printed. The U/W game was entirely on the battlefield. They would commit and commit and seek to protect 'walkers with Gideon, manage resources with Jace, and ultimately defend and kill with Elspeth.

The problem?

They couldn't actually defend their own positions.

Nor could they avoid being overpowered because they had no way (in general) to say “no” … plus they played from a standpoint of presumed dominance. Who would argue with the force of those planeswalkers? So they lived and won by a self-perpetuating series of strategies. Lay more lands, play more 'walkers. Up their loyalty. Play more and more 'walkers.

Could I un-blue the U/W Eldrazi deck and actually improve it?

The result was a deck very much like that second-place PTQ deck; and the answer was yes.

I quit playing in the Tournament Practice room in less than a week.

All I did was grind 1v1 queues.

I smashed multiple PT winners and National Champions.

I knew, that once again, I had Secret Deck for Nationals (and I was actually qualified).

But then the PTQ result came up.

In a sense, I was crushed.

It wouldn't be secret any more.

For once in my life: I guess I had been winning a lot of queues.

I resigned myself to the fact that at least the birding and replays or whatever produced Dreamstone Hedron rather than what I considered my masterstroke: Obelisk of Alara. I had a couple of copies of Prophetic Prism in my deck, as a kind of terrible Preordain. Together with Obelisk of Alara, I had done everything that you can do.

I mean sure, I brained a lot of Jaces to death for three. Most blue players thought they could just Brainstorm against my Mono-White deck. I liked this ability so much I added a basic Mountain, which I ran off Pilgrim's Eye.

The other stuff was way more exciting though. I guess I can write different names of different colors and say that I used those abilities… but that won't ultimately be all that exciting. When it happens in the moment though… I mean when you catch someone's key creature with the black ability or get off a surprising combat with the green ability… it's just so awesome in the then and there (and your opponent will either facepalm, congratulate you, or rage depending on maturity level).

Ultimately, we never even played the deck.

No, it didn't have anything to do with the leak.

There was a little chatter RE: the deck, but nothing too much. I mean one online PTQ, and he didn't even win.

The problem was that when M11 rolled around, the deck was no longer what it was pre-M11. Mana Leak made the notion of playing all these super expensive cards much less attractive, and Primeval Titan made the Mono-Green version of the deck basically the same thing, but with, you know, Primeval Titan and Summoning Trap.

So as much as I loved the deck, that pointy stick that I had used to perforate a National Champion moments before his win, it hit the dusty shelf, a casualty of evolution.

So why the hell is it suddenly awesome again?

So much has changed. So much remains the same.

Mana Leak is still there… but U/W decks are consistently playing three, or even fewer. That was really the card that was holding the top end of the deck back.

Primeval Titan is still there… but Sword of Feast and Famine and Stoneforge Mystic allow us to compete with him. Like Boromir wanted to do at the beginning of the War of the Ring, we can take the weapons of the enemy and attack the metagame with them, ourselves.

Do I think this is “the deck”…?

I mean I would play it.

I have won much more with it in recent weeks than most of the decks I've tried, including with cards everyone else things are the stones. To be honest, since I started this project at the beginning of the week, I've already explored and re-explored some other areas (B/U Infect with Tezzeret [awesome] and U/G Genesis Wave [again]), so I certainly can't promise I'll play it tomorrow (last Sunday I would've put myself on 80%+)… but it is shockingly competitive.

Remember what I think these days: We have to play the best cards, front the best threats. I'm trying very hard to be less blatantly clever (though I still very much value cleverness)… but one thing that I was very happy to learn was that I could, yet, produce an off-center deck—without Jace, the Mind Sculptor—that was quite effective against Jace, the Mind Sculptor decks.

And obviously, it's next to impossible to imagine a deck that's better in the metagame against beatdown.

I hope you enjoy the videos. I really enjoyed making them, and I think they tell a compelling story:

• All Is Dust is awesome.

• Contagion Clasp is a legitimate threat in the format.

• Tumble Magnet is often trump.

Tumble Magnet is actually one of the most fun finds I made. I know that sounds silly given its popularity in so many decks, but in-context, it has been awesome. When you have four Tectonic Edges and up to four Tumble Magnets, you know what happens?

You don't auto-lose to Primeval Titans.

I mean sure, Primeval Titan is still Primeval Titan. For that matter, Avenger of Zendikar is still a pretty muscular pile of Plants. But when you have Tumble Magnet, your mass removal starts looking a whole lot better, and you can defend yourself even while mana is tapped.

And with the Edges? You don't blatantly lose to Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle.

So obviously I failed to record any Valakut footage (you'll have to believe me).

I don't know what would be unfavorable, honestly. The deck seemed to be competitive against everything and pretty decently favored against Caw-Blade. Probably it's loose against the black Caw-Blade (I think I lost to the only one I played against), but I was very pleasantly surprised at the deck's ability to exploit All Is Dust to eat up mythic rares.

The deck I played from video to video moved around a little bit (in particular, I cut White Sun's Zenith, which I could basically never cast), but if I ran it tomorrow, this would be the list:

Mono-White Control Featured by Mike Flores on 2011-04-17 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/21635.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Artifacts 2 Contagion Clasp 4 Everflowing Chalice 1 Sword of Body and Mind 1 Sword of Feast and Famine 3 Tumble Magnet Artifact Creatures 1 Wurmcoil Engine Creatures 4 Squadron Hawk 3 Stoneforge Mystic 4 Wall of Omens Legendary Creatures 1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth 1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre	Sorceries 1 Day of Judgment 4 Survival Cache Tribal Sorceries 4 All Is Dust Basic Lands 9 Plains Lands 4 Eldrazi Temple 4 Inkmoth Nexus 4 Kabira Crossroads 4 Tectonic Edge Legendary Lands 1 Eye of Ugin	Sideboard: 2 Contagion Clasp 1 Tumble Magnet 4 Baneslayer Angel 4 Kor Firewalker 2 Celestial Purge 2 Day of Judgment
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

Remember Eye of Ugin can go and get Wurmcoil Engine; that said, the card I miss most is Pilgrim's Eye. More than once, I thought about cutting Hawks… then realized that couldn't right (I mean no Jace and no Squadron Hawk!?!).

Three Stoneforge Mystics might seem a bit odd, but the deck has a lot on two, many of which are more strategic. Wall of Omens is a cantrip, and the deck is mana hungry. Everflowing Chalice and Contagion Clasp are core and compete at the two slot. Plus, you really can't play fewer than four Hawks.

… So Stoneforge took the bow.

The only note I would have at this point is that I made the deck and did all the videos before I saw the evolution of all the Mortarpods in the U/W versions (though obviously Mortarpod is a stalwart of the other Mono-White version). I'm not sure how I feel about Mortarpod relative to Sword of Body and Mind. I often win by searching for the U/G Sword and just fighting past Jace with one dude. It is also so good against Celestial Colonnade. That said, Mortarpod is very good against opposing Squadron Hawk + Sword of Feast and Famine… I'll have to think about that one.

Anyway—enjoy the vids!

LOVE
MIKE

MWC vs. Goblins

MWC vs. Caw-Blade

MWC vs. Boros

MWC vs. MUC

MWC vs. U/W Control

MWC vs. Grixis Tezzeret