How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Dryad Militant: 20th at GP ABQ

Understanding Standard: An Introduction

Mono-Black Control
Mono-Blue Devotion
Mono-Red Aggro
Esper Control

The hit list. For pretty much the entire duration of this standard format, I’ve hated every deck I tried. However, with both the standard MOCS and GP Albuquerque – basically a hometown GP – coming up, I had to find something I wanted to play.

In general, I gravitate toward balanced decks that have cohesive plans against every other deck in the format, and it felt like there wasn’t anything like that available. I don’t mind if a deck loses to some specific sideboard card – I’m a huge fan of Affinity in Modern, for instance – but I usually can’t forgive any kind of structural weakness. And it felt to me that pretty much every deck in the format had some fundamental flaw that made it so that there was some other deck it could almost never beat.

The presence of Master of Waves and Tidebinder Mage made it so that this flaw could be as simple as playing only red cards. The presence of Thoughtseize and Duress meant that it could be as simple as playing 26 or more lands. The presence of aggressive red creatures and burn spells meant it could be as simple as playing Thoughtseize maindeck. The fact of a deck that plays 8 or more spot removal spells meant that it could mean building your deck to utilize Master of Waves and Thassa.

In my mind, the metagame was kind of a parallelogram wherein the mono-black decks preyed on the devotion and control decks, where the devotion decks preyed upon the aggressive decks, where the aggressive decks preyed on the clunky mono-black and control decks, and where control tried to beat everything else. The fringe decks that pressed on the structure from unusual angles, like the Naya Control deck that Brad Nelson innovated or the Hexproof builds that had been seeing some play, mostly had the same problem: they couldn’t beat control. Because they all attacked the metagame in some strange way designed to exploit some pattern, they usually just lost to the most powerful thing in the format: Sphinx’s Revelation.

Naturally, this is hyperbole. With the power level of standard as low as it is, there aren’t any actually unwinnable matchups. Even given bad matchups or an unfavorable field, good players have demonstrated their ability to consistently outplay their opponents; Sam Black’s insane success with Mono-Blue Devotion is the most ready example of this. However, I think this system illustrates at least the texture of the format. Having broken the format down to these four pillars, I could think about how to approach it. I didn’t want to just have to outplay everyone, nor was I interested in trying to be “one step ahead”. I wanted a deck that approached the format in a novel, resilient way.

To do all this, I tried to figure out why each deck was strong and where each deck was weak. I came to the following conclusions: The mono-black decks beat the control decks by having a critical mass of discard that kept the opposition from functioning as they pulled ahead with their Underworld Connections and Mutavaults, while the control decks choked on their land count. The aggro decks beat the mono-black and control decks by playing mostly 1- and 2-mana creatures that generated an incremental tempo advantage against 2- and 3-mana removal. The control decks were better off than the mono-black decks because they had Supreme Verdict and Jace to turn the tides. The mono-black and control decks beat the Devotion decks by killing their meaningful permanents and leaving them with 3-mana do-nothings and Judge’s Familiars. The midrange decks beat the aggro decks by having unbeatable midgame trumps like Polukranos and Master of Waves to back up their defensive Devotion creatures.

My first thought was to try to find a control deck that was better against mono-black and aggro than Esper was. It seemed to be that the best paths were either to clean up the manabase and play a higher density of “answers” to Underworld Connections – that is to say, countermagic – or to splash red for powerful, pointed cards like Anger of the Gods and Assemble the Legion. I didn’t spend much time thinking about the second route partially because I wasn’t interested in trying to figure out a manabase that could consistently cast all of Anger of the Gods, Jace, and Supreme Verdict, but mostly because at the time Andrew Cuneo (Gainsay on Magic Online) had streamed some with the following list:

For whatever reason, the Twitch broadcast isn’t archived so I can’t find the exact decklist, but I think that this one is at most one or two cards off.

This list was basically exactly was I envisioned when theorizing a UW control deck. By playing twice as much countermagic and the full 4 copies of Divination, it made it far more difficult for mono-black players to successfully establish an Underworld Connections. While playing so many slow cards would likely lead to some clunky draws against aggressive decks, I thought that the smoother manabase would more than compensate since the aggressive decks were built on the principle of exploiting decks with a high density of removal to begin with. Most Esper decks at this point were following Reid Duke’s turn for the SCG Invitational and even cutting Doom Blades entirely. If anything, I thought that the Divinations would make the aggro matchups better, just by increasing the frequency with which the deck cast Supreme Verdict on Turn 4.

I couldn’t tell you exactly how true all my theories were. I wasn’t incredibly invested in making the deck work since I didn’t really want to play a control deck at GP Albuquerque and have to race the clock while dealing with all the novelties of live play. I played the deck some and was actually fairly happy with the matchup against mono-black control and could accept the matchup against mono-red. Three main things led me to abandon it, however. The first was that I felt that in many matchups I actually could not win without casting Supreme Verdict at some point, which led to a lot of frustrating games where I just lost because there wasn’t a Verdict in my top twelve or so cards – this is in addition, obviously, to all the games where I cast Verdict and lost anyway. The second was that you would sometimes just instantly lose the game when they cast Thoughtseize on the play and took your Elixir. This specific problem obviously wasn’t a huge concern by itself, but it was symptomatic of something larger: the deck needed to win by beating every one of its opposition’s cards and had very few cards that did anything powerful. The third was the BR aggro deck that had just won GP Santiago. I played against it a number of times and felt pretty hopeless each time. Not only did they mitigate Supreme Verdict by playing mostly haste creatures and a number of Xathrid Necromancers, but also they often had Thoughtseize to substantially reduce the number of games where you got to cast Verdict. While I didn’t expect this deck to be extremely popular in either tournament, I thought that it was worth respecting, given that it had just won a GP.

It was at this point that I started to wonder if an aggressive deck could afford to play a sufficient density of removal to combat the Devotion decks, and if an aggressive deck could play a sufficient density of discard to consistently take the control decks’ Supreme Verdicts. It would just be a matter of playing black cards, wouldn’t it? I didn’t think the mana in the RB deck was realistic for an aggro deck, but I remembered a mono-black aggro deck that Owen Turtenwald wrote about a few weeks prior. I played some with that and while I thought that it played too many terrible cards with too little payoff, the ideas behind it were definitely powerful.

Tuning Wb Aggro

What did I think a black aggro deck should look like, then?

I started with the list with which Ben Lundquist won the Standard portion of SCG Los Angeles, removed the Frontline Medics and Boros Charms for Necromancers and Doom Blades, and overhauled the sideboard to include a suite of discard spells. I thought the white weenie shell was a perfect compliment to the black cards not just because it let the deck play a scry-land manabase, but also because the white creatures would give the deck a natural advantage in aggro mirrors. This definitely looked like a deck that could beat all of the decks I cared about.

My reasoning behind the Necromancers was that in many board states they provide a similar effect to Frontline Medic with “haste” because the majority of the creatures in the deck are just 2/2′s anyway, while also giving the deck more resilience against Supreme Verdict. While it’s obviously bad against a lot of the midrange decks, I thought it was also pretty powerful against both aggro and mono-black. I split Doom Blades and Ultimate Prices as a concession to the popularity of mono-black control; while I thought that the matchup was favorable enough Game 1 that it was winnable even with a few dead cards, I didn’t want to go too far. While mono-black decks could get away with running a weird suite of removal because they always had 4 Hero’s Downfall to fall back on, I thought that Doom Blade was too powerful and efficient to forgo in a deck like this. I worked two more black sources in the deck because I added more splash cards, and also because the splash cards I added had a more sensitive time frame. While Boros Charm is almost the same whenever you cast it, Doom Blade gets progressively worse with each new creature your opponent plays. The Far // Away was the only weird card, and was just a concession to the popularity of Blood Baron in Esper.

I came up with this list only a few days before the first run of the MOCS finals and spent the days leading into it primarily testing out the Necromancers and weird cards like Pacifism that I ultimately discarded. I was reasonably happy with everything, and ultimately just added a fourth Banisher Priest to the sideboard and a second Spear to the maindeck over an Ajani. I found that Banisher Priest was the actual best card in the midrange matchups and definitely wanted 4, and Spear was just almost always a better draw than Ajani. For instance, playing a Spear against a Jace almost always killed it, while Ajani was just slow and clunky overall. Spear was especially great against the hate cards like Electrickery that were becoming popular, basically blanking their best sideboard card. Ajani makes a lot of sense in the Wr version of the deck because they already have Boros Charms to kill Jaces and the Ajanis can serve as additional burn spells with the -3. However, this build of the deck was for more interested in establishing a dominant board position. I thought a balanced split was still worthwhile though, because drawing multiple Spears was disastrous in a way that drawing multiple Ajanis wasn’t. Overall, I was very optimistic about the deck.

I played this list in the first run of the MOCS to a X-1 finish before it crashed. I actually didn’t face any of the matchups that I had in mind when building the deck in the first half, but found that I had a surprising amount of game in many matchups that I had accepted as bad. For instance, against the Gruul aggro deck, having six removal spells for their trump creatures made it so they could very realistically flood out, where the Rw build of this deck would often just fold to the first Polukranos or Stormbreath Dragon. My loss was to Mono-Blue Devotion, which I went 1-1 against overall, which I thought was reasonable.

After the MOCS crashed, I spent the next week practicing with the deck some more. At some point, I remembered that Orzhov Charm was a card and replaced the Ultimate Prices with them. Orzhov Charm was a great find because it was a removal spell other than Banisher Priest for Nightveil Specter, while also killing Master of Waves and Boros Reckoner. Not only that, the reanimation ability actually provided a decent amount of play against Supreme Verdict out of control decks, reducing the quantity of dead cards in those matchups. At the same time, I didn’t want to play too many because a lot of the matchups where removal is best – the pseudo-mirror, Mono-Blue Devotion, Mono-Red Aggro – come down to races. And even against a deck like Mono-Black Control where life is mostly irrelevant, taking too much damage still makes it easier for them play for a win with Gray Merchant of Asphodel. I was pretty happy playing 2.

Sadly, I just lost horribly the second time around. I got pretty lucky to beat a Gr Devotion deck in the first round, before getting somewhat unlucky to lose consecutively to mono-black and mono-red aggro. I played the last three rounds for fun and went 1-2 against 3 Esper decks.

I didn’t particularly mind the result, all things considered, but I was pretty unhappy with how the postboard games against Esper went. There were a lot of games where I didn’t even have a discard spell, when the discard spells were most of the reason I was splashing black to begin with, and there were more games where I had one discard spell against a hand with both Verdict and Jace. It just wasn’t enough. At some point around now I also realized that Xathrid Necromancer was actually just terrible. While it was great against aggressive decks, it was often just an expensive, bad Strangeroot Geist against control decks. On the other hand, Banisher Priest significantly overperformed. While I realized it was good against decks with little removal, I found that it was fine even against decks with a lot of removal like mono-black simply because they had to kill it, their removal was overtaxed anyway, and it still opened up a good attack the turn it came into play.

Resolving to cut the Xathrid Necromancers, add more Sin Collectors to the sideboard, and overall streamline the deck, I ended up with this:

By maindecking the Banisher Priests and biasing my deck against aggro and midrange decks, I could rededicate my sideboard to control. And by having the full 8 discard spells, I greatly increased the number of postboard games where I drew 2, which is the point at which I thought I was favored. However, I still wanted access to Xathrid Necromancer to provide an additional angle of pressure in those matchups, as well as to give the deck more resilience against decks with a lot of removal. I started with 2, but ultimately cut one for a Swamp.

The sideboard Swamp was a last minute stroke of insight, when I realized that I only needed 1 Xathrid Necromancer to have a cohesive sideboard plan against all of the decks I cared about. There are a number of matchups where casting the black cards is particularly important, and in those matchups the plan was to board into 10 or more black cards. Because either Banisher Priest or Mutavault was bad in all of those matchups, the Swamp in the sideboard seemed pretty valuable. By taking out either a Plains or a Mutavault in sideboarding, I could make my deck much more consistent in a wide spectrum of matchups. In hindsight, I’m not sure if it was necessary or if the mana in the maindeck could have been configured in some other way, but I was pretty happy with it through both testing and play.

I ultimately played this list at GP Albuquerque to a 13-3 finish, good for 20th.

The Tournament

Instead of a matchup-based discussion of how the deck plays, I thought it might be interesting to provide a tournament report instead. I rarely play Magic live and had no byes going in, so I have the full sixteen rounds to talk about.

A foreword: I didn’t take any notes during the tournament, but I’m very vain about my memory and am going to be very specific about my matches regardless. While I obviously think that all of the board states I recreate and hands I recount are correct, I’m accepting they may not be. I also discussed all of the plays that I thought were interesting or close, and my definition of those words might be more broad than most people’s – so sorry if some of the recaps are a bit long.

Apologies to most of my opponents, as well; I’m horrible with names, so I’ve only named the three opponents whose names I remembered: two pros and one person I noticed made top 16 when looking through decklists in the coverage.

Round 1: Naya Hexproof

My opponent mulliganned this game on the draw and kept with a shrug against my curve with removal spells, so I was feeling pretty confident. However, when he led with [cardTemple of Abandon[/card], Temple Garden, and Voice of Resurgence, my shoulders slumped. I had no idea what he was playing, but there was no way it was a good matchup. In playing removal spells and discard instead of Boros Charms, my build of the deck sacrificed some internal consistency: instead of winning with Falters and burn spells, it needed to set up to win with just the first Falter. Because of this, midrange strategies like the various Naya decks that could stabilize dramatically with cards like Elspeth or Voice of Resurgence were dramatically more difficult to overcome.

The one thought that gave me comfort was that it made little sense to play Anger of the Gods and Voice of Resurgence in the same deck: I was on the play and if I didn’t need to worry about a sweeper, it was possible I could overwhelm him – at least in the first game. I had a Dryad Militant and Daring Skyjek to pressure him and a Banisher Priest on Turn 3 for his Voice to keep attacking. He had a Chained to the Rocks to get his Voice back, but by that time he’d already taken 7 damage so I just animated a Mutavault and served for five more to put him down to 8, and played another Daring Skyjek to represent lethal if I topdecked Brave the Elements or if he didn’t have another blocker. On his next turn, he showed his hand by enchanting his Voice token with Gift of Orzhova and attacking. I attacked and killed the token with Orzhov Charm when he went to put Unflinching Courage on it, and then attacked for lethal.

Figuring out how to sideboard in this matchup was difficult: just by virtue of the available card pool, not many of the creatures in his deck could have actual Hexproof. It was likely that he had a bunch of cards like Loxodon Smiter, Boon Satyr, and Voice of Resurgence just to fill his curve, and against those cards removal would obviously be quite valuable. However, at the same time, removal is so bad if he just has any hexproof creature. Similarly, Thoughtseize would be good to take his hexproof creatures, but my deck wasn’t build to cast Thoughtseize on Turn 1, he would almost certainly have Gladecover Scouts anyway, and his auras were interchangeable enough (they all kill me) that I wouldn’t care about any one over the others. I reasoned that there would be a number of hands that he would keep where his only meaningful creature is a Witchstalker, though, so I thought I had to board some in. In the end, I decided to cut the Doom Blades and Orzhov Charms for 3 Thoughtseize and the 1 Far // Away. I wanted to leave the Banisher Priests and Azorius Arresters as my removal because they could deal with Fiendslayer Paladin and Voice of Resurgence, while the black removal could not.

I casually drew an opening hand of 2 Godless Shrine, Thoughtseize, Far // Away, 2 Boros Elite, and a Precinct Captain, which was probably as close as it got to the stone nuts with my deck in the matchup. He had a Turn 1 Scout, which I didn’t want to see, and when I Thoughtseized him and saw Voice of Resurgence, Gladecover Scout, Ethereal Armor, Boros Charm, and Sacred Foundry, I figured I would just lose to a giant lifelinker despite my perfect draw. I took Voice, he played Scout, and I played 2 Elites. I wanted to play the Elites instead of the Captain to encourage him to attack and maybe trade, which he actually did, leaving him with just the one Scout enchanted by Ethereal Armor. He didn’t play another aura on his third turn, but I pulled the trigger on Far // Away anyway; knowing that he had Boros Charms, I wasn’t interested I holding my mana up every turn, just taking damage and hoping to get value. In the end, he didn’t draw another creature and my mediocre beats eventually got there.

That was a lot of words for a fairly straightforward match: my opponent’s deck largely just didn’t function. Still, having not played much live, I was quite nervous going into the tournament, and this win broke a lot of my anxiety.

1-0

Round 2: Naya Control

The actual nightmare matchup. Game 1, I mulled to 5 and he completely ran me over. I boarded out 2 Boros Elite, 4 Banisher Priest, 2 Azorius Arrester, and 1 Orzhov Charm for 4 Thoughtseize, 3 Sin Collector, and 2 Doom Blade. He had few enough creatures that I didn’t want a lot of removal, and I wanted all of my removal to kill Stormbreath Dragon; while leaving all of the Anthems in against a deck of removal spells and sweepers is counterintuitive, I think that they’re pretty valuable to increase pressure without further extending, as well as to mitigate Chandra, Pyromaster.

Game 2 was interesting in that he was in the process of crushing me, but got overconfident and threw the game. The board was my Spear of Heliod, Dryad Militant, soldier token, and 4 lands with black mana against his Smiter, Xenagos, satyr token, and six lands. My hand was a Doom Blade that I couldn’t find a reason to cast against his empty hand; life totals were my 18 to his 6. In my mind, my only out here was to draw more creatures than he drew removal and to topdeck a Brave the Elements. But Plains was also good enough, as it turned out.

I drew and shuffled my hand quickly before playing it, to hopefully convince him that I had just another land in hand and that he should be aggressive. He bought it (or I thought he did, at least). He drew and played a Temple, scried to the bottom, and made another satyr before attacking with both. At the end of turn, I got to Spear a satyr and Doom Blade his Smiter, then untapped and killed Xenagos with Militant and put him to 4 with the soldier. Next turn he had Selesnya Charm and the satyr to trade with both Militants, but the soldier put him to 2 and next turn he had to spend his topdecked Anger on it. He then drew Smiter and Temple to my Brave the Elements and Soldier of the Pantheon, and somehow he just had no outs.

Game 3, he kept a somewhat loose hand on the play with just a Temple Garden and a Mountain, and when he missed his third land drop my heart lifted with the hope that I might escape with a win. I Sin Collectored him on my Turn 3 to see Smiter, Selesnya Keyrune, Stormbreath Dragon, Selesnya Charm, Chained to the Rocks, Chained to the Rocks. I could only take the Selesnya Charm he couldn’t cast, but my hand at this point was 2 Doom Blades, 2 creatures, and a Spear with a Boros Elite in play, and I had a much better shot against that hand than almost any six cards his deck was capable of. I extend everything to try to take as much advantage as possible of his mana troubles through his spot removal. He then drew Shock, Anger of the Gods, and Mountain and never ended up needing to cast the pair of Chained to the Rocks.

The turn he drew the Mountain against my two remaining creatures, one of which was Boros Elite, he cast Selesnya Keyrune but not Chained to the Rocks. In retrospect, I think this should have made me suspect that something was up. I drew and extended a Soldier of the Pantheon against that turn, reasoning that he likely just wanted to blank my creatures with Loxodon Smiter and wanting to get him with Doom Blade as badly as possible. I can’t imagine that most sane people would do that, though, and I’m pretty sure now that he played Keyrune over Anger and that I just gave him a free card. The Soldier would have only made him use one of his Chaineds, though, and the Assemble the Legion would have killed me all the same. In retrospect, I think my play was still fine, though. I think my chances of beating both Anger and 2 Chaineds from my position was small enough that I needed to hope that he didn’t have it.

1-1

Round 3: Gu Creatures

It seemed like my opponent this round was more of a casual player than a competitive one – I mean this as an observation, not an insult. In our games, he played cards like Drakewing Krasis, Druid’s Deliverance, and Horizon Chimera, and he didn’t know that Soldier of the Pantheon’s protection meant it couldn’t be blocked by multicolor creatures. He also played Polukranos, though, which could have very easily just won him the match. Luckily, I drew a lot more removal spells than he drew threats both games and eventually managed to grind him out through his Fogs while he flooded on combat tricks. To his credit, my opponent played his cards pretty well and made a match out of things. I just boarded out the Ajanis for the Doom Blades because of the fliers, the Fogs, and his monsters.

2-1

Round 4: Rb Young Pyromancer

Game 1, my opponent stalled on two lands and just played some removal spells. At this point, I put him on RB midrange, something like Gerry Thompson’s deck for PT Dublin, and used a Temple of Silence to put a Doom Blade on the bottom. He then played Young Pyromancer and made me horribly regret my decision. Luckily, I had Spear of Heliod to minimize its impact and enough of a board presence from his manascrew that he couldn’t recover. At some point that game, he played a Tyramet, the Murder King, which let me know I was in against the full-on brew.

Given that I wasn’t at all sure what my opponent was playing, I kept sideboarding light, taking out the Azorius Arresters and a Banisher Priest for a Doom Blade and 2 Sin Collectors. I didn’t expect Doom Blade to have too many targets, but I was willing to have dead Doom Blades if it meant consistently killing his Pyromancers. I took out the Arresters to reduce the number of X/1′s in my deck, and I took out a Banisher Priest since it seemed likely he had a lot of removal and relatively few creatures. The Sin Collectors were primarily to protect the remaining Priests and to give me a better idea of what was happening. In retrospect, it’s possible the Sin Collectors should have should been Thoughtseizes, but I didn’t want to cut my creature count by much against his removal deck. I still wanted to leave in all the Anthems to protect against hate cards like Flames of the Firebrand or Electrickery.

Game 2, he kept a hand with Elecktrickery, Young Pyromancer, and Chandra, Pyromaster and I miraculously again had a Spear to not just get horribly massacred. He had a bit of a slow start and I managed to kill his Chandra, and he ultimately traded his Electrickery and two Young Pyromancer tokens for my Xathrid Necromancer. I managed to get him to 12 by attacking with two zombie tokens, a Fiendslayer Paladin, and a Dryad Militant against his lone Young Pyromancer, and I fully expected to just grind him down by attacking with my enhanced creatures. Then he played a second Young Pyromancer and a Molten Rebirth, and won the flip. Luckily my hand was two Brave the Elements. Since Molten Rebirth was the last card in his hand at this point, I Braved to get in for six and won when he just drew another land.

3-1

Round 5: Gr Devotion

Game 1 was pretty interesting. I was on the play with a Boros Elite against his Elvish Mystic. My hand had a Spear, a Mutavault, a Brave the Elements, and a Banisher Priest, but no other cheap creatures. I didn’t particularly want to trade my Boros Elite here because I had a Spear and so few other creatures, but I’ve always made this attack under the assumption that Gr players would almost never want to trade their premier accelerant. So I attacked, and he blocked, and I decided I needed to blow Brave just to keep the creature around for pressure. This attack has worked far less than I expected it to, and I probably shouldn’t keep making it in the future.

Continuing, he played a Traveling Satyr and I tried to punish him for blocking by using a Banisher Priest on it. I also had a Doom Blade, so the Priest wasn’t critical. He played a Sylvan Carytid, I responded with Spear and Mutavault, he played Polukranos, and I killed it and attacked. He then had a turn where he used 6 mana to play Scavenging Ooze, grew it once, played Domri, and fought my Elite. At this point, I’ve drawn into a Daring Skyjek and Soldier of the Pantheon but only have 4 lands with my Mutavault. He’s only at 7 at this point so I’d like to apply as much pressure as possible, but he can gain more 2 life from the Ooze so I don’t think I can give up that much for it. Ultimately, I decided to just attack with the Priest. To me, it was the only attack where I was happy with all the outcomes: if he blocked, I wouldn’t have to worry about the Ooze, and if he didn’t, his being at 6 instead of 9 would give me 6 outs to outright win instead of 0. He blocked, which let me get Soldier and Skyjek into play against a board of mana creatures. He untapped and unloaded three more mana creatures, and I drew Ajani to 8 him for the win. Given that I was drawing Ajani, the block with the Scavenging Ooze was a meaningless decision, but I’m still surprised by it given that he didn’t have any follow-up. When he blocked, I figured he must have had another giant guy and that I was just dead; given that he didn’t and had infinite mana, he basically traded his 5/5 for my Priest, his Satyr, and a point of life. That’s not a horrible trade in the abstract, but I think that the neither Satyr, the life, nor my Priest were actually that relevant.

Game 2, he mulliganned into an awkward hand against my Precinct Captain, Spear, and 3 removal spells, and he basically just played some lands, played some fatties, and died.

This is one of the matchups that I think is dramatically easier with black than with red. Their creatures come down fast and they have some serious lifegain in Nylea’s Disciple, so the 4 damage from Boros Charm doesn’t accomplish much since getting damage through is so hard. And, because the Wr deck has no real interaction, Polukranos eventually just becomes Plague Wind. Doom Blade, however, is pretty insane in the matchup. Not only does it kill everything, but it does so at a profit of mana. The matchup still isn’t great, but it’s much more winnable and possibly even favorable.

I’ve just been boarding out the Azorius Arresters for Doom Blades in this matchup. My reasoning is that winning is about having a superior board position against their massive mana base, so the tempo swing from the Arrester’s detain isn’t nearly as valuable as it usually is. I don’t like bringing in Thoughtseize because there are a number of games where they lose before casting all of their threats, and in the matchup their threats are pretty much interchangeable. The only situation where it’s great is when it takes their only accelerant, but the mana base can’t cast it consistently enough in the timeframe where that’s relevant.

Round 6: Joe Demestrio with Rw Burn

Game 1, I had the actual nut draw against his mulligan to 5, and he only played a Temple of Triumph and a Chained to the Rocks before succumbing. I put him on Rw Devotion at this point because that’s the most common deck that plays all of those cards, so I boarded out a Banisher Priest, the Ajanis, and a Boros Elite for 2 Sin Collectors and 2 Doom Blades. I don’t like Banisher Priest that much in the matchup both because removing a Boros Reckoner with it is so risky and because it matches up so poorly against Anger and Mizzium Mortars. I think the Priests are necessary to have the necessary density of removal in the matchup because they have so many problematic creatures, but I don’t really want to draw multiples.

Game 2, I saw with a Sin Collector that he has Warleader’s Helix, Anger of the Gods, and Stormbreath Dragon, though he still had Chandra’s Phoenix in his deck alongside Anger. Given that he didn’t play a devotion creature in either game, I suspected that he wasn’t actually a Devotion deck, but it wasn’t what was going on. I remember keeping a slightly sketchy hand with a Temple, a Mutavault, and a 1-drop that needed a second white source for multiple Precinct Captains and a Spear. I didn’t get there in a meaningful timeframe and think I eventually took a line that planned to win by topdecking one of the Ajanis no longer in my deck. I was pretty sure that I didn’t have any other outs in my 75 cards and figured I might was well play to my sideboarding incorrectly. He had a removal spell anyway, so it didn’t matter.

For Game 3, I sideboarded out two more Banisher Priests for the remaining Sin Collectors. I still wasn’t particularly clear what was going on that this point, but it didn’t look like he had that many creatures, and it looked like he had a lot of spells. I still wanted the Doom Blades to answer Reckoners and Dragons, however. This game I just played some creatures and attacked and lost to Mortars, basically. There were two interesting turns. One was his Turn 4 after I extended 7 power in play, when he went deep in the tank and tapped and untapped 3 mana before playing Reckoner. I’d left a white mana open at the time, so I suspected that he had Anger and played Reckoner instead. It made sense from his perspective because casting Anger almost just loses if I had Brave, but it was also a good thing for me because it meant that he could basically no longer cast Anger into open mana. Since he’d played around Brave once, he would have to play around it whenever he could, and it was really disastrous for him after playing Reckoner. Given that I didn’t have Brave, this was great for me since it gave me a little hope, where I’d have just lost if he cast Anger. The second interesting moment was the turn where he tried to turn the corner by playing a Phoenix and attacking, leaving just his Reckoner back. After trading some creatures for some removal spells, I still had 7 power in play, and I Doom Bladed his Reckoner and attacked him from 14 to 7. I had 2 mana available and two cards in hand at this point: a Precinct Captain and a land. Here, I had to decide whether to play the Captain or not. Given that I was fairly sure he had Anger, I probably should have just left mana open. That said, given that I had 7 power of white creatures in play anyway, he would almost always just cast Anger anyway to bait out the Brave. And if he cast Anger, my one Precinct Captain was unlikely to go the distance by itself. And the problem was that if he didn’t have Anger and just had a random removal spell, or even a Warleader’s Helix, I didn’t feel like I had enough pressure if he just left the Phoenix back and blocked. I convinced myself that even though I was pretty sure he had Anger, that I wasn’t beating it anyway and needed to play to the chance that he was just bluffing by thinking so much. So I played the Captain and lost on his next turn to Mortars.

After the game, he talked some with his friend and let me know that he did in fact have Anger on the turn he played Reckoner. In retrospect, while I don’t think I was ever winning that game anyway, I definitely should have tried to let him find a way to lose by playing around Brave.

4-2

Round 7: BUG Midrange

I was actually pretty happy with my play this tournament up to this point, but I played pretty comically badly this match. I was feeling pretty sick throughout the whole day from too much caffeine and what I suspect was a side effect of my arthritis medication, and around this point things were starting to catch up with me. I’d also eaten a somewhat greasy lunch and it was really disagreeing with me. These are just excuses, obviously.

The first game, I just ran him over with a good curve, Spear, and Brave the Elements. He had a maindeck Golgari Charm for my Spear at the end, but it still meant he couldn’t Shrivel my creatures. I missed a bunch of Soldier triggers this game, which obviously wasn’t great, but I wasn’t too unhappy because the life was pretty unlikely to matter in the matchup.

I sideboarded like I do against mono-black, bringing in Far // Away and Necromancer for the Doom Blades.

The second game is where things really fell apart. On the third turn, he passed with 2 mana and a Sylvan Carytid up against my two 2/1′s. My hand had Ajani, Azorius Arrester, Darying Skyjek, Banisher Priest, and a land at this point. I thought for a while about whether I’m willing to play Ajani and +1 it into the Golgari Charm I thought he likely had, or if I wanted to attack first to bait the Charm and play Skyjek postcombat. I came up with the line of attacking first with the intention of playing Skyjek postcombat if he Charmed and playing Ajani to force the Charm if he didn’t. I think that this was definitely the best line since it only gave up a damage in the best case scenario and was much better against what I expected. However, my line was better than I thought. What I missed is that he couldn’t even block if he wanted to Golgari Charm in response to the Ajani activation because the Carytid would still have 2 damage on it and die. Going through with my plan, I attacked, he blocked and took 2, I played Ajani, and he Golgari Charmed in response. I binned my creatures, but his Carytid stayed alive. I was actually pretty happy with this play at the time, though I’m much less happy now.

Luckily, his only real play this game was a Prognostic Sphinx, and I used my Arrester and a Priest to tap it down while killing him. I obviously missed some Soldier triggers this game as well.

The annoying thing is that I was so preoccupied the soldier triggers that I didn’t even notice that the Carytid was supposed to die until thinking through the games much later.

5-2

Round 8: Mono-Red Aggro

Game 1 I talked myself into keeping Ajani, Spear, Doom Blade, Temple, Temple, Plains, Godless Shrine. Basically, I reasoned that I would be pretty happy with that 6 card hand without the Godless Shrine, I had two Scry lands, I had both colors of mana, if I just drew a creature or two my hand was likely fine… My thinking should have been much more straightforward: the Godless Shrine was basically a dead card, and Ajani and Spear are good against completely different decks than Doom Blade. So basically depending on what matchup I was playing, I had a mediocre 4-5 card hand. This fact became rudely apparent to me when my opponent attacked me with Ash Zealot and played Burning-Tree Emissary into Chandra’s Phoenix.

I boarded out 2 Ajani, 1 Spear, and 2 Orzhov Charms (nice keep) for 2 Doom Blades, 2 Fiendslayer Paladins, and the Xathrid Necromancer. Basically, I want to board in more 3-drops without raising my curve, I think the Ajanis are too slow, and I think the life-loss from the Orzhov Charms is actually a serious cost in the matchup.

At this point, I was fairly angry with myself and resolved to tighten up. Game 2, I mulliganned a one-lander with 4 1-drops on the play that I would have kept against most removal decks, but I think that hitting a good curve is too important in this matchup. My six-card hand was great, and being on the play let me just run him over. Game 3 he mulliganned to a one-lander and I had Boros Elite into Skyjek into Fiendslayer Paladin, and eventually killed him with Brave.

After the game, he showed me that he’d boarded in Skullcracks, which I can only imagine were for Brave the Elements. Given that he had both Reckoners and Zealots, I thought that decision was actually pretty interesting; Brave is a critical defensive card, and I can imagine a lot of combats where Skullcrack would blow me out. I was pretty lucky to get offensive draws both games.

6-2

Round 9: Christian Calcano with UW Control

Game 1, he mulliganned to 6 and I mulliganned to 5. I drew both Doom Blades and didn’t do much before he cast Jace and then Elspeth and won.

I boarded out the Priests, Azorius Arresters, Doom Blades, 1 Plains, and 1 Brave the Elements for all of the discard, the Xathrid Necromancer, and the Swamp. I decided to leave the Orzhov Charms in the deck over the Arresters because I thought that there would be reasonable value in having a card that could kill Mutavaults, and Orzhov Charm is just a better creature anyway in any game where a 1-drop ends up in the graveyard. Brave is fine for getting through Elspeth or countering an Azorius Charm, though it’s definitely not an effect that’s good in multiples in the matchup.

Games 2 and 3 were both pretty interesting, though too long to talk about in too much depth. For Game 2 in particular, I thought I played really well. I kept a hand of Temple, Plains, Dryad Militant, Daring Skyjek, Thoughtseize, Ajani, Brave the Elements. I led with Temple since the Skyjek would catch up with the Militant in terms of damage after just the second attack, and I wanted the option of playing a Captain or a second Thoughtseize if I drew either. I bottomed a Godless Shrine with the Temple, which was kind of a close decision, but I figured that my hand functioned well enough on two lands that I’d rather wait to draw a third. I played Skyjek on Turn 2 and Thoughtseize on Turn 3, seeing Jace, Jace, Celestial Flare, Celestial Flare, Last Breath, Last Breath, Island against his board of Azorius Guildgate and Plains. I took a Jace and then neither attacked nor played Militant to keep him from using his mana. On the next turn, I played Militant and Brave when he Last Breathed it, and when he played his fourth land he declined to play Jace to play around Spear and Ajani. At this point, I’ve drawn Sin Collector, Sin Collector, Godless Shrine, so I Sin Collected him and saw that he drew Sphinx’s Revelation. Given that he didn’t cast Last Breath in response to the Sin Collector, I figured he was trying to bait me into taking it; but I did so anyway because I had another Sin Collector, he didn’t have a fifth land, and I again wanted to keep him from spending his mana. The next turn, he drew a land casts Revelation for 2 in response to the Sin Collector and drew a Verdict off of it, which I luckily got to take. The game went on for a while as I tried to make his Celestial Flares as inconvenient as possible.

There was another somewhat interesting turn toward the end of the game where my board was Sin Collector, Sin Collector, Dryad Militant, Daring Skyjek, and a fresh Ajani against his Jace on 5 and 2 open mana. I knew his hand was Celestial Flare, Celestial Flare, unknown, and my hand was empty. I don’t remember the life totals, but I wasn’t close enough to killing him to ignore Jace. I decided to put a counter on a Sin Collector and to attack Jace with the Skyjek, big Collector, and Militant, and to attack him with the small Sin Collector. I obviously expected him to cast Celestial Flare and wanted to sacrifice the small Sin Collector to play around Detention Sphere, so in my mind it didn’t matter much where I sent it. I ultimately decided to send it at him to “force” him to play the Celestial Flare; if I attacked Jace with everything, he would have had the option of just letting Jace die and saving the Celestial Flare in case he drew a Verdict since the Celestial Flare wouldn’t change the outcome of the combat at all. By attacking him, I was trying to give him an actual incentive to use the Flare by threatening damage. He obviously had an Azorius Charm for my Skjek to maximally punish me, letting him -2 Jace. Given that he had multiple Flares in hand and my hand was pretty empty, I think he had enough incentive just spend his mana each turn anyway, so the upside of my attack was small while the downside was pretty substantial.

I got lucky that he never drew a second Verdict even after a Revelation for 4, and at the end of the game both Celestial Flares were still in his hand as he took lethal damage.

I don’t remember Game 3 as well, but it involved fighting through multiple Jaces and Verdicts but no Revelations. I eventually managed to grind him out as he flooded, and just like that I was in Day 2.

Throughout the game, he kept letting me know that I was holding my hand at an angle where he could see my cards, which was pretty nice of him. I tried to fix this, though I don’t know how successful I was since Todd Anderson told me the exact same thing after he beat me playing for Top 8, that he could see part of my hand from the way I was holding my cards. I’m curious now just how many cards I showed my opponents throughout the two days. There’s not much I can do now about it except to play more live and try to be more attentive though, I guess.

7-2

Round 10: Bg Devotion

Game 1, I kept a one-lander on the draw in the dark that didn’t get there, and I died to Rats and Demons. I managed to set up a few turns where I could win with Brave if he didn’t have a removal spell or a Mutavault (or likely any land even, as he was stuck on 4), but he had an Abrupt Decay each time.

As against the BUG deck, I just boarded out the Doom Blades for the Far // Away and Necromancer.

Game 2, I had a pretty fast draw on the play that just killed him.

Game 3, I likely make a serious mistake. I was at 19 and he was at 6, and he had a 7/7 Desecration Demon and an Underworld Connections to my Azorius Arrester, Precinct Captain, Dryad Militant, and Spear. My hand was Arrester, Precinct Captain, and I think Brave the Elements. On his combat, I declined to sacrifice to his Demon and he attacked me to 12, then played a Grey Merchant to go up to 12 and put me at 6. I detained the Grey Merchant and attacked him back down to 6 while dumping the rest of my hand, but the next turn he had a Devour Flesh and a Specter to live to see another two draw steps. Luckily, he bricked on his 4 draws to Grey Merchant and I managed to win the game on the next turn, but I gave him many outs when he should have had 0. Given how good my hand was, I think there was no reason to let him hit me.

8-2

Round 11: Wr Aggro

I think that playing black and maindecking Banisher Priests offer a pretty substantial advantage in the psuedo-mirror; it makes your Brave the Elements and Precinct Captains way better, and the Banisher Priests are basically untouchable. My opponent had awkward draws in both games anyway while my draws were great, and he basically spent a lot of mana on creatures that should have trumped my board but just died while I pulled incrementally ahead.

In this matchup, I like to just board out the Ajanis and a Spear for 2 Doom Blades and the Xathrid Necromancer. I think my sideboarding actually gives me a bit of an edge as well since I think that most people leave their Anthems in. While boarding out Anthems in a mirror match is definitely counterintuitive, the Anthems don’t actually let your creatures trump theirs because almost every creature in the deck has more power than toughness. Everything still trades off, and at the end of the day the guy with a creature instead of an Anthem wins because he has a threat. I think that Spear is still decent in racing situations but given that the removal slows the pace of the games substantially anyway, I don’t think that it’s worth the risk of drawing 2. Fiendslayer Paladin might be a reasonable card to board in to trump the ground, but I think that it’s bad enough against Brave the Elements that it’s not worth it on the whole.

9-2

Round 12: Mono-Black Devotion
Round 13: Mono-Black Devotion

I was feeling especially sick during these matches so I can’t remember much from them. Neither player played anything like Shrivel, though, and I suspect that for the most part I just played creatures and they died. I think the mono-black matchup is one of the big reasons to play a deck like this, and I think that decks like this are a reason that I’d strongly prefer not to play mono-black. A deck with a bunch of Thoughtseizes and clunky removal spells is so fundamentally weak to just a pile of aggressive creatures.

11-2

Round 14: Mono-Blue Devotion

Game 1, my opponent kept a hand with just an Island and Mutavault and never drew a third land. I had a decent curve with an Orzhov Charm and Banisher Priest, and he just got overwhelmed.

I boarded out the Militants and Ajanis for 4 Thoughtseize and 2 Doom Blade, and a Mutavault for the Swamp. The Militants are bad because of how poorly they match up against Tidebinder Mage, and Ajani is weak because the -3 is poor against their fliers, it dies fairly easily, and is pretty slow. The Thoughtseizes and Doom Blades hopefully leave them with just Judge’s Familiars. Playing a long game is pretty inevitable against mono-blue, and they have so many 4-mana trumps that Thoughtseize is pretty good. Even as a late draw, it can drastically reduce the impact of a Cyclonic Rift.

Game 2, I Thoughtseized him Turn 1 on the draw and saw Jace, Jace, Domestication, Nightveil Specter, and 2 lands. I didn’t have a good way of playing around Domestication, I had a Banisher Priest, and I had enough creatures to swarm Jace, so it was pretty easy to just take the Domestication. That was probably that most interesting point of the game, though. He drew a Thassa and a Rapid Hybridization for my Banisher Priest, and I just slowly died with two Doom Blades in my hand because I could never break through his Specter.

Game 3, I Thoughtseized him on Turn 2 and took his Jace, leaving him with 2 Rapid Hybridization, Tidebinder Mage, 2 Island, and Nykthos. He drew a Cloudfin Raptor and played it to represent a 3/3, but I had a Doom Blade and a Banisher Priest so I just attacked with impunity. Eventually, he had to start chumping and Hybridizing my guys, buying time and hoping to draw lands to overload a Cyclonic Rift he drew. He bricked on his seventh land and I took the game. Though, to be fair, even if he had drawn the land for Rift, he still would have needed to overcome a number of creatures, a Spear, and a Doom Blade.

My opponent mentioned after the round that he’d boarded out all of his Master of Waves, reasoning that his other 4-drops – Jace and Domestication – were better against my removal spells and that he wanted to keep his curve low. I’m not sure I agree with his decision since my removal is so taxed in the matchup anyway and Master of Waves is so good when I can’t answer it immediately, but I couldn’t really comment since I don’t have much experience playing with Mono-Blue Devotion. It was definitely a bold and interesting choice, and I think there’s something to be said about the fact that my opponent thought that one of his best cards against Wr was worth boarding out against me.

12-2

Round 15: Todd Anderson with Mono-Black

Game 1, I had a good draw, and he had a terrible one. The one interesting decision was on Turn 4, when I attacked with a Dryad Militant, a Precinct Captain, and a soldier token and he animated a Mutavault to block. He was at 14 at the time and I had an Orzhov Charm in hand, so I had the choice between killing the Mutavault and putting him to 9 or holding the Charm and leaving him at 10. I was pretty sure he was missing the third black source for Specter, so I decided to just save my Charm and add a Mutavault to the board. There’s an argument for not attacking with the token as well, but I didn’t want to give him an easy block on the Militant and I didn’t think the Mutavault was particularly important to him. I played the Charm the next turn when he just had another Mutavault and activated both because just a Specter would no longer have been good enough.

Game 2, there was one pivotal turn where I think I made the right decision but lost because of it. My board was Xathrid Necromancer, Precinct Captain, and Boros Elite, and 3 land, while his was a Nightveil Specter and 3 tapped lands. He’d missed his second land drop and had only killed a Dryad Militant and Thoughtseized a Spear so far. My hand was Daring Skyjek, Soldier of the Pantheon, Brave the Elements, and Plains. He was at 16.

The obvious play to me here was just to attack with everything and play both creatures, leaving up Brave. If he blocked the Necromancer, I would have had 11 power of white creatures in play against his 11 life, so he would have needed a removal spell to not just die, and I would have had 13 power of creatures so the Specter couldn’t even block profitably if he did. If he blocked the Captain, my attacks would have been good enough with Necromancer the next turn that the Brave likely wouldn’t matter. So the turn basically came down to whether I wanted to try to play around Shrivel by keeping my Necromancer around.

The two main problems with trying to play around Shrivel in my mind were that if he just had a Hero’s Downfall – a card that was pretty likely to be in his hand at the moment – I would just lose to Shrivel a turn later anyway, and that the majority of people weren’t even playing Shrivel – or were playing just 1 or 2. I didn’t really want to give him room to draw running lands and jam more Specters or anything into Grey Merchants by playing too cautiously; if he got to play land, Specter, land, Merchant, or something similar, the extra turn I would give him by not attacking would actually be the difference between winning and losing.

Given that I was playing Todd, I could have looked up his decklist after day 1 and seen that he was running 3 Shrivel, which may have affected my decision. I didn’t, but even if I had, I’m not sure that it’s actually better to play around the Shrivel than it is to play around running lands. Given that he had spent a Doom Blade on my Dryad Militant earlier in the game and drew at least one land in the interim, it was somewhat unlikely that he already had Shrivel in his hand, and playing into running lands would also open up other sequences of cards that might win him the game. Having thought everything through, I actually think that it was right to just play the creatures out and give him his 6% or so chance of winning the game. At the time, I was berating myself for playing into the Shrivel that he “obviously” had, but he was nice enough to let me know he topdecked it after the game, and looking back at how the game played, I should have known it was pretty unlikely he already had it.

Getting 5-for-1′d with lethal on board and a Brave the Elements in hand definitely sucked, though.

Game 3, I mulliganned into a mediocre hand and got crushed by Nightveil Specters and Demons. There was a turn where I had the choice between playing a Banisher Priest or an Azorius Arrester into an empty board with 2 Priests and an Arrester in hand and chose to play Priest, reasoning that it would let me play other X/1′s I drew without extending into Shrivel and that I had another one in hand. I think that this was likely wrong because he’s not actually guaranteed to have a removal spell and Priest is so much better in that case. Given that he just played a bunch of Demons and Specters, it was likely he didn’t have much removal. I don’t think I would have won with either play, though.

12-3

Round 16: Rw Devotion

My opponent from Round 13 was nice enough to help me figure out standings – I can figure out some things logically, but don’t have much clue overall – and let me know that I could draw into top 32 but likely not make top 16 even with a win. I offered my opponent a draw and he declined, saying that he’d rather just play and let things fall as they would.

He had pretty clunky draws both games, and managed to Doom Blade his Dragon and run him over both times. Game 2, I had a choice of whether I wanted to play another creature into Mortars if the last card in his hand was either land or Mortars, but I was pretty sure it was a Dragon from the way he played the game, I had a Doom Blade in hand, and playing the creature would let me kill him on the subsequent turn through multiple blockers, so I just played it. It was a Dragon, and with the Doom Blade he was drawing dead and almost dead. I boarded like I did in Round 6, taking out a Banisher Priest, the Ajanis, and a Boros Elite for 2 Sin Collectors and 2 Doom Blades.

13-3

And with that, my tournament was over.

After I finished my last match, I walked behind Andrew Cuneo to watch him finish the remainder of his match. I’d watched some of his other matches over the course of the weekend and knew he was playing the UW control deck he’d made with some improvements against aggressive decks. After some maneuvering with Pithing Needles and Detention Spheres around Bramblecrushes, he ultimately dispatched a Gr Devotion deck. At one point he noticed me standing behind him and gave me a bit of a weird look.

I’m normally an extremely reserved person and almost never talk to people I don’t know from some other context – a fact that’s not led to an incredibly pleasant existence – but with hearing John Green talk about Harvey, having just watched Harold and Maude, and having listened to “Don’t Be Shy” about a thousand times, I managed to carefully construct a determination to somehow be different. I’ve been a huge fan of his stream for pretty much the duration of its existence and I’ve learned a ton from it, and I randomly decided against my sanity that talking to Andrew Cuneo at the moment was going to be the turning point of my existence. I said something about how I hoped I didn’t creep him out by watching his matches, and how I was a really huge fan of his stream. He responded by saying that he wasn’t streaming as much anymore because he didn’t like Theros limited very much, he didn’t think his current constructed deck was great for streaming, and that he didn’t have as much time anymore because he’d just moved. I mostly just nodded and said yeah. I told him that I’d considered playing his deck before the tournament but didn’t think I could play quickly enough, and he said some things about why he liked it. At some point in this conversation I became cognizant of what was happening and suddenly said “see you” and walked away.

I rather hope I didn’t embarrass myself too much, though it’s possible that the conversation wasn’t as awkward as I remember it. In retrospect, I’m kind of happy I did say something, for whatever that’s worth.

Past that, I waited around to see where I ended up in the final standings and watch the Top 8. Sure enough, I ended up at 20th, in last place among the people with 36 points. Given that I had no byes and most, if not all, other people on that point total did, I was kind of annoyed about my tiebreakers. But it was also my fault that I lost in the Round 2, and I couldn’t really be unhappy about how I did.

Watching the Top 8 from the rail was miserable enough that I didn’t feel like I was getting much from it in terms of either education or entertainment: it was fairly crowded and uncomfortable, and it was difficult enough to work out just what was going on in the games that it was impossible to think about any of it. From watching the coverage later, though, it seems like I missed out on seeing some pretty amazing games firsthand. Nonetheless, I left to get dinner with my parents soon after the Top 8 began.

A note about my parents: I started taking a weird, insanely expensive medication for my arthritis a few months ago after my previous medication resulted in a stomach ulcer. I took a quarter off college partly because of some bureaucratic issues surrounding the medication, but largely to see about its side effects. The biggest one is the suppression of my immune system. They didn’t want me playing in the GP due to the amount of people that would be present but drove me down anyway, and I started feeling sick after just a few rounds. After I started feeling sick, they stayed around the entire weekend to make sure I was okay despite knowing nobody else there and nothing about Magic. Naturally, they were kind of embarrassing at times, but they were also undeniably awesome. I suspect they’ll likely never read this, but I wanted to thank them publically and, I mean, who knows?

So, thanks to my parents for taking care of me, Ben Lundquist for winning SCG LA, and my opponents for some fantastic matches of Magic. Overall, despite the various physical complications and the two grueling days, I had a lot of fun. It was obviously great to do well in a big tournament with a deck I put a lot of work into. I’m actually considering trying to run things back at GP Dallas in a few weeks, though I suspect that isn’t too realistic.

Conclusions

Going forward, the only change I would make to the deck would be to cut the Far // Away for another Xathrid Necromancer. I always thought that boarding in the Far // Away to deal with Blood Baron was a little loose, but many Esper lists were running the full 4 at the time I put the deck together and I felt that just Thoughtseize wasn’t enough. Esper has been dying in popularity and current lists have fewer Blood Barons, so I’d currently rather use the sideboard slot on a more powerful card that’s good in all the same matchups. If Shrivel becomes standard in mono-black sideboards, the second Necromancer is especially valuable as a defensive tool. I’m also interested in testing out Imposing Sovereign over Azorius Arrester. I spent so much time testing the other aspects of the deck that I never got around to thinking much about Sovereign versus Arrester, and ultimately was happy enough with the Arresters that I just kept them. The manabase might also need some tuning, but I don’t think there’s a ton that can be done about it. The deck is too aggressive to play very many Guildgates and I think that Mutavaults are too good to play fewer than 3 – I’m still not sure I was right to cut one. I still think that 10 black sources is the minimum, and I like the 11th in the sideboard.

Thanks for reading; hopefully this wasn’t too longwinded. If you have any thoughts about the deck, my play, my construction of Standard, or the article in general, please let me know in the comments.