Eternal Warrior #6: Whitey Ford Sings the Blues

Last month, I debuted on this site with an article about blue control decks in Classic. I had decided to force myself to play outside my usual comfort zone and bring a control deck to this season’s first Classic Quarter qualifier tournament. I built and tested four variations and settled on a UB Tezzeret deck.

To refresh your memory, here is the list I played:

Let’s dive right in and see how I did with the deck. The first few rounds will have text recaps, but the last two rounds were properly recorded with high-definition video and live audio commentary.

ROUND 1:

I was up against MTGO Academy’s ChrisKool with a Survival of the Fittest aggro deck. You can see the list here. His deck employs the usual mix of disruptive creatures such as Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Magus of the Moon, as well as a few more narrow singleton creatures to tutor up with Survival. Apart from the presence of Squee, Goblin Nabob, the deck has no plan to do anything tricky with Survival other than use it to find the right answer at the right moment.

In Game 1, things got off to a rocky start as I mulled to five on the play. I had little early action apart from a Baleful Strix, and he dropped a swarm of creatures onto the field as well as a Mother of Runes. I managed to land a Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas, but he was able to use Mom to swing an exalted Linvala, Keeper of Silence past my Strix to take out Tezz. My maindeck has no good answers to what he had on board, and I lost quickly thereafter.

Sideboarding: I brought in 3 Perish, 1 Myr Battlesphere, 1 Engineered Explosives, and 1 Cursed Totem. Perish gives me the answer I need if he floods the board with creatures, as does the second copy of Explosives. Battlesphere is often a better Tinker target against a deck with Swords to Plowshares, and by virtue of creating five artifacts at once, it can lead to immediate victory with Tezzeret’s ultimate. Cursed Totem shuts off his mana dorks, Moms, Knight of the Reliquary, and many of his utility creatures.

I removed 1 Hurkyl’s Recall, 3 Spell Pierce, and 2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor. Spell Pierce is pretty dead against him, as he has only six noncreature spells and enough mana dorks to force any critical spell past Spell Pierce anyhow. I typically cut Jace against creature swarm decks, as he rarely lives to do much more than be a 4-mana Brainstorm. That said, it’s worth noting that my opponent had no land destruction other than one copy of Strip Mine, so reaching 4 mana to cast Jace wasn’t an issue here as it would often be against these types of decks — especially true considering my abundance of artifact mana.

For Game 2, I kept my starting seven and had a Tezzeret on Turn 3. I protected Tezz by animating a Sensei’s Divining Top. My opponent had mulliganed to five cards, and had no action outside of two Magus of the Moon. I nuked both Magi with Engineered Explosives — getting the third color of mana through a Lotus Petal. He was out of gas, unable to answer Tezz, and scooped.

In Game 3, I mulled to six on the draw. He led with a land and a mana dork. I had Ancient Tomb into Talisman of Dominance on my turn. He played Thalia off the mana dork and his first land. In response, I tapped the Talisman to cast Mystical Tutor for Tinker, planning to go for it on my second turn. Unfortunately, he followed up Thalia with a Strip Mine, his only land destruction in the deck, leaving me unable to Tinker. I made my land drop, but was now exhausted on mana. He cast a Qasali Pridemage, threatening to take out the Talisman and leave me with only two mana sources against his Thalia. At this point, I became more concerned with being locked out any meaningful interaction through mana screw, and decided to Force of Will his Pridemage. Unfortunately, I had to pitch the Tinker to do this, abandoning that plan. As the game played out, this proved to be a mistake. He didn’t have an overwhelming amount of pressure to follow this up, and I drew into a couple more lands, so I would likely have had time to Tinker. In hindsight, the odds were likely better to draw into the mana I needed than to draw another suitable win condition. Having pitched my Plan A, I fail to find a Plan B in time. Loss, 0-1.

ROUND 2:

Now sitting at 0-1, I was up against Cronin. He had a very interesting planeswalker control deck featuring Venser, the Sojourner, Ajani Vengeant, and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage to go along with three boring old Jace, the Mind Sculptor. You can see his list here.

In Game 1, I kept on 7 cards with a few lands, a mana rock, a Voltaic Key, Tinker, and Spell Pierce. I choose not to tap out and go for an early Tinker, fearing that my opponent will have the answer and be able to take control with a ‘walker on his side of the board. On his Turn 3, he resolved an Avalanche Riders to blow up my Library of Alexandria, though he burned two Lotus Petals doing so. I followed up by making my third land drop, and playing a Talisman and Sol Ring — mana crisis solidly averted! The following turn I cast Tezzeret, he tried for a Mana Drain, but I Spell Pierced it and Tezz hit the board. I used the +1 ability, finding another mana rock. My opponent hit his third colored mana source and cast Mana Vault. Expecting to win next turn, I Spell Pierced the Mana Vault, giving him the opportunity to tap down his remaining two blue sources to resolve it, and he opted to do so. Facing no untapped blue mana, I cast Key, and then Tinker for Time Vault, threatening a lethal Tezzeret ultimate on my additional turn. My opponent had nothing and scooped.

Sideboarding: I bring in 1 Spell Pierce and 1 Myr Battlesphere, removing 1 Hurkyl’s Recall and 1 Nihil Spellbomb.

Game 2 — It’s Duels of the Planeswalkers! There was a minor scuffle early, as I resolved a Baleful Strix and my opponent nuked it with Manic Vandal. Then on Turn 4, after some lengthy internal debate between the two factions of my brain, neither of which actually knows how to play a control mirror, I tapped out for Jace with Force backup. Jace resolved, and I used his Brainstorm ability, but his time on this plane would be short-lived. My opponent cast Ajani Vengeant with Flusterstorm to handle my Force of Will. Ajani went to my face with his Lightning Helix ability, redirecting it to Jace to send my ‘walker to the graveyard. I followed up with Tezz, the +1 whiffed, and my opponent attacked him down to 2 with the Vandal. He followed up with a Mana Crypt into his own Jace. I drew another Jace of my own and resolved it. The walkers stared each other down for awhile, as I tried to keep them alive facing the pressure of his Vandal and another impending Helix to the face from Ajani. He added a Strix and Epochrasite to the board, and I ran out a Sol Ring and Tezzerated it. Slowly losing the war, I fatesealed myself and saw Demonic Tutor on top of my deck. I chose to run out the Time Vault in my hand, planning to Tutor for Key next turn and go for the win. Unfortunately, my opponent saw an answer I should have noticed — he used his own Jace to bounce Manic Vandal and replay it, nuking my Time Vault. He had Ajani back up to 3 loyalty by now, and sent another Helix at my Jace to get him off the board. As a last ditch move, I decided to Tutor for Tinker, hoping to get Battlesphere into play, but he answered the Tinker with Flusterstorm. Out of gas, facing down two ‘walkers, and running out of clock, I scooped.

Game 3 — I kept 7 on the play, consisting of Ancient Tomb, fetchland, Island, mana rock, Explosives, Spell Pierce, and Brainstorm. Not a lot of action, but a good amount of mana, and I was hoping to lean on Brainstorm and that fetchland to draw me into a threat. I led with Tomb into Talisman. My opponent had Volcanic Island into Sol Ring on his first turn. I’m afraid of him having that much mana early, so I used the Explosives on my turn to kill his Sol Ring. He passed through his second turn, and I EOT Brainstormed. I shuffled away a dead card and landed a Strix. He again passed through his third turn, and I beat in with Strix. My game clock was down to four minutes, and I was feeling some pressure to make a play. I Tutored for Tinker, which I cast, leaving open Spell Pierce mana. He cast Vampiric Tutor then cast a Flusterstorm from his hand, trumping my play. On his turn, he hit a fourth land drop, and cast Ajani, which I Spell Pierced. I drew Strip Mine, and nuked his Underground Sea, representing his only black source. He played a Polluted Delta on his turn and replaced the Sea easily, tapping down for Jace, which I had no answer for in hand. I drew another Spell Pierce, but one turn too late! He again hit his land drop, and tried for Venser, which I Pierced.

I was down to about two minutes of game clock now. I drew Mystical Tutor, but having already gone for Tinker, I cast it on my turn and grab a Brainstorm to try and dig for some threat of my own – wait, I did what??!! Is that short clock turning my brain to mush? He has a Jace in play! He fatesealed away the Brainstorm and added a Ral Zarek on his side, quickly putting the game away. Loss, 0-2.

This one was disappointing to me. I expected my deck to have a decent matchup against his, with Tezzeret in particular putting pressure against his ‘walkers. Unfortunately, what this matchup did was make me realize that I had made a serious deckbuilding error. There was not nearly enough countermagic in my deck for the game plan I was attempting to employ, and this got thoroughly exposed in Round 2. Also, I learned that managing my decisions under clock pressure is going to be something I absolutely have to improve going forward. Because I so often play aggro and Fish decks, and am naturally a slow player, trying to play control was giving me a crash course is staring down the clock.

So now I was on the mat, with a 0-2 record. I did expect that one or two players who finished 3-2 would make Top 8, because the tournament was no longer allowing intentional draws. It was unlikely I would get there, but it was worth playing it out, and I wanted to give the deck a full tournament to see how it performed.

Round 3:

I played this match while I was at a legal training seminar. Which is to say, I played it from a hotel room at a lake resort, overlooking the water, while everybody else took the afternoon to play golf. But I assure you I had spent the whole morning learning things, I promise.

Anyhow, my opponent for Round 3 was Silar, playing a mono-black peasant discard deck. Well, that’s what happens when you are in the 0-2 bracket. Not that his deck should be underestimated. I’ve noted before that sometimes these rogue budget decks are attacking you in a way that you didn’t plan for, and they can steal a win. But I certainly had enough ways to play around his discard, and his copious amounts of creature removal were fairly useless against me. Also, being mono-black, he had no answer to artifacts, and I took him down with Vault-Key in both games. Win, 1-2.

The biggest threat to victory in this round was being forced to play it on my laptop. Lessons learned: buy a USB mouse for the next time this happens.

Round 4:

For the next two rounds, I have full video coverage, which I recorded live during the match. My Round 4 opponent was Craft, playing Lands. Lands, sometimes known as 42Lands.dek, is a Legacy control deck that uses cards such as Exploration or Manabond to dump disruptive lands onto the field quickly, as well as a Life from the Loam engine for card advantage and Wasteland recursion. Craft’s version incorporated the Punishing Fire combo with Grove of the Burnwillows, as well as the new combo of Dark Depths with Thespian’s Stage, which was only recently made possible by the M14 rules changes concerning legendary permanents. The Legacy-ported list was upgraded to Classic through the addition of Bazaar of Baghdad and Strip Mine. The strength of the deck against control is that most of its key “spells” are actually lands, immune to countermagic. The weakness of the deck is that most of its own control elements are targeted at fighting creatures, which is inconvenient against an opponent looking to win through other means. Lands can’t interact very well on the stack. Faced with a non-creature threat, it must try to win by combo-ing out Marit Lage.

Jace proved to be extremely good against this deck, as it has no way to stop a Jace from heading towards ultimate other than getting the Punishing/Grove combo online. I won the match 2-1. Win, 2-2.

Round 5:

In the qualifier earlier this spring, I had faced FishyFellow during the final swiss round in a situation where I thought I needed a win to get in, and his breakers were terrible. He wanted to play it out regardless, and he wound up beating me, but I snuck into Top 8 anyhow at 4-2. Now I faced FishyFellow again, with the situation reversed. My breakers were terrible, and even with a win, it wasn’t going to be enough. But I wanted to play it out for this article, and again for the sake of fairness to all other players.

FishyFellow was playing his Show and Tell combo deck. If you made the worst Little League team in Muncie, Indiana, played an entire season batting against a time-travelling 32 year-old Bob Gibson, pitching with a bionic arm from a mound 30 feet in height, the kids would have a better batting average than I do against Show and Tell. Whether in Legacy or Classic, and no matter what I’m playing, the deck destroys me.

The old rock-paper-scissors wisdom that “control beats combo” isn’t universally true in older formats. In Classic, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that “prison beats combo”. Conventional control decks in Classic must awkwardly race combo and dig for their own finishers. Given my relatively small number of counterspells, and especially the small number of hard counters, Show and Tell can just bide its time and go off when the coast is clear. I would have to play the match very aggressively.

My strategy won me a game, but I lost the match 1-2. Loss, 2-3.

And so the qualifier came to an end, with a disappointing 2-3 finish against a bizarre lineup of decks. What do I make of it all? The deck may not have been tested by the typical gauntlet, but I still learned a lot about the deck. Right off the bat, I am sure that I need more hard counters, likely 2-4 Mana Drain, a card I had avoided because of the double-blue requirement. I likely could have worked it in. I also learned more about my own problems in playing control, though I’m not sure I’m any closer to actually solving those problems.

---

I have to admit, since I began writing about Magic regularly, I’ve been feeling a need to prove myself. I know I’m not going to win every tournament or play perfect Magic, but I’m putting myself out there, and consequently I have to demand more of myself. Whether in the games we play, or in our careers, the only real metric we have to tell if we’re “good” at anything is wins and losses.

I am fortunate, in a way, to work in a career where I can actually get concrete feedback through wins and losses on a regular basis. I remember my first jury trial as a public defender. I was on the job less than a year, and inherited a case from another public defender who had transferred to another office. My client was accused of burglary, having been allegedly caught in the act by the bar owner responding to a silent alarm. The bar owner shot the purported burglar in the leg, who then managed to crawl out the back door and flee. My client couldn’t even tell his story to the jury, because if he had testified, the state would be allowed to cross-examine him about his other legal troubles. I also had some first-trial jitters. They mostly don’t teach the “nuts and bolts” of conducting a jury trial in law school. So I tried the case by cobbling together what I had learned from a brief “New Defender Workshop” seminar, re-runs of Law & Order, and vague memories of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. I’m being a little facetious here, but you get the idea. As an example, there’s a sort of “script” that you have to follow in making certain objections. Experienced lawyers can spit out this stuff in their sleep, but young lawyers have to pick it up over time. I wanted to keep out the gun. So when the state first began to talk about the gun, but before actually offering it as evidence, I launched into a rambling, incoherent objection to its “lack of improper foundation” – hat tip to the Southern District Court of Appeals for later immortalizing the stupid phrase I uttered. The judge knew it was my first trial and helped me get the magic language right in the end, for my client’s sake, though he still overruled me. I lost that case, and maybe most lawyers would have lost that case too. There’s no way to know. But would F. Lee Bailey have pulled out the win?

And what about the wins I’ve gotten since then? Did I become a better lawyer since my first trial? Or did I just have better cases? Winning and losing is an imperfect metric, to be sure. But it’s the one we have, and it isn’t very forgiving. We do all sorts of mental gymnastics to escape viewing a loss as “our” loss. If I lose a case, it was really because the star witness bombed. But sometimes we do those same mental gymnastics to avoid taking credit for a win. “Sure I won that case, it was a slam-dunk, a first-year law student from Thomas Cooley could have won that!”

I do this with Magic all the time. I show up for FNM to draft a limited format I don’t really like, don’t open any bombs, mutter about wasting ten dollars on this garbage I’m opening, then sit down for Round 1 already mentally prepared to lose. I play a deck for artificial reasons other than that “I believe it can win the tournament,” and then have a ready-made excuse when I fail. But I also refuse to credit myself with my own victories. I do well in a tournament and I give the credit to matchups, good opening hands, bad opponents, and great topdecks. I win a draft, but how could I have lost when I opened Crosis and was passed three Terminates in Pack 2? I make a great play that leads to victory, but I later decide that I made it for the wrong reasons.

With experience, you can start picking apart what was attributable to you and what isn’t. But you’ll never be perfect at it. The only thing you know for sure is that you won or you lost. Just be sure to let yourself own the victories as much as you own the defeats.

You can find me on Twitter @cjwynes.