Classic League 2012-13 is a player-run Classic tournament series, hosted by Classic Quarter (and run by Unlocking the Vault author enderfall), sponsored by MTGO Academy and MTGO Traders, and made possible through generous prize donations from Wizards of the Coast and a multitude of dedicated Classic fans. As you can read about here, the 2012-13 Classic League is broken into several qualifier tournaments, from which successful players will be invited to an invitational next year on July 20th (my birthday!). Below are the six rounds of swiss of the second qualifier tournament from the perspective of participant PlanetWalls (and his goofy deck), and then some Top 8 matches. The tournament is now over, so check out all the vids below.
Feel free to ask any questions about the format, the tournament structure, etc., in the comments. You can see all the decklists represented in the tournament in the Classic League forum on Classic Quarter.
Classic Mono-U Frosty Go, by PlanetWalls
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NOTE #1: If you’d prefer to watch all these videos in sequence, check out the playlist on MTGO Academy’s Youtube channel.
NOTE #2: In the Introduction video, I misspoke within the first 30 seconds that I made it to the “1st place” position of Classic League QT #1. This was not the case; I made it to 4th place.
Sweet Classic content.
Not sure if I like the list. I didn’t watch the introduction because 15 minutes is waaaaaaaay to long for an intro (once again, LSV takes 2 minutes to explain his lists, I’ll watch random guys on the internet play interesting games of magic, I won’t watch them babble a monologue for 15 minutes).
Trinket mage did beat down for the win in game 2 I guess, but it is clunky and leads you to play mediocre cards such as top, and I am not sure your deck can actually afford to play mana crypt as appart from the titans, your deck hardly outraces 1.5 damage a turn after stabilizing on average, more if you are unlucky. Only explosives actually gets rid of the card in your deck, which is very little. The flexibility of using it together with frost titan as essentially a ramp card that can also fetch other things is nice, but the deck already is kind of all in on the frostys as it is. Maybe I am just not used to the higher amounts of mana as opposed to a format like legacy due to cards like sol ring, crypt and manadrain, but it still seems sketchy.
On to the games.
Game 1: I think you played this one well. You took a while, but you did arrive at the right plays, so kuddos. The keep was a bit greedy, but the right kind of greedy.
Game 2: This was pretty bad. Sorry to say, but I do not think you either played this well or showed great insight in the format in this game.
Example 1: You misstep his delver, he takes a while and you think he is considering misstepping your misstep, while he was considering forcing it. This was really easy to read and you missed it. It did not matter, since he did, but if he declined to force, you would have put him on misstep instead of force, while it was pretty obvious that while force is something he would consider, misstep he would snap play.
Example 2: Picking top over explosives is just wrong. Top is not card advantage. In fact, until you pop it, it is card disadvantage, you pay a card and quite a lot of mana for card selection. Anyhow, your opponent has a delver out, you have a crypt out, you do not have time to muck about with top and delver is a real threat, as is your own crypt. That is, unless you get lucky a lot of times in a row. Which you did. Had you taken the explosives and blown up the delver you could have drawn the jace later, played it, protected it from bolt by +’ing on an empty board and hopefully win before the crypt kills you.
Example 3: The jace play. You played this correctly, but I was wondering what you were thinking about for so long. Obviously you do not plus it, since he just delvers plus bolts it, in which case you might as well bounce and let him bolt it, this ends up with flipped delver unflipped in his hand, which is superior. You could brainstorm, I guess, but that just dies to his delver and then you risk dieing pretty fast to his delver, bolt and your crypt. Anyway, you found the correct line, so I guess this is nitpicking, but meh.
Example 4: shortly after, you do not crack your fetch to top because you do not want to shuffle away the brainstorm. The next card after that is an island which you do not want and you have a top in play. The top already does what the brainstorm does if you do not want to ditch cards from you hand, which you do not as your hand is a fetchland which you want to shuffle with and a snapcaster mage which seems good. And behold, since you always just top, you end the game with the brainstorm in hand. Definetly should have just fetched and topped there.
Example 5: keeping the cavern is pretty bad. You do not even have a titan and you definetly do not need land, you do not know if he has a force and if he has, he will get to use it on something else, though I guess titan resolving beats anything but burning you out. In general though, you just wasted a card. You might even draw the titan a turn to late since you get one fewer relevant draw step.
I feel you got insanely lucky with the crypt and should have definetly lost this game, which I think was very winnable.
Despite the perhaps overly critical commentary I do really enjoy your Classic content. Classic seems like a very interesting format with a lot of decisions and interactions that are complex and unique to the format. If I did not enjoy the videos i wouldn’t take the trouble to comment on them.
Comments–
I discuss your notes about Trinket Mage and Mana Crypt in the introduction video. Steel Sabotage and Into the Roil also bounce it. The decklist videos are long because they are extensive, and the deck is not something played by anyone else in the format. In fact, there are many cards not played by any other deck in the format, including Glen Elendra Archmage, Frost Titan, Venser, and a suite of 1-off counterspells. In addition, I talk about some cards I cut at the last minute. That being said, don’t watch them if you don’t want. LSV’s 2-minute videos include 2 minutes of content. A 15-minute decklist video may be something which can be shortened, but it’s more than 2 minutes of content.
I sideboard incorrectly before Game 2, keeping in Steel Sabotage and taking out Into the Roil. Also Pithing Needle can name a fetch land, which I failed to mention.
I do not feel I need to defend myself when it comes to plays I made which you argue I took too long to make. I am a slow and (at my best) methodical player, especially when recording. Also, the format is difficult to test for since so few DEs fire (they only recently began firing again), meaning that interactions are still unfamiliar, and lines of play (by opponents) difficult to predict.
Ex. 1 — As for the Delver-and-Misstep interaction, I grossly disagree with your assessment that he would’ve obviously snap-played a Misstep had he had one (even though he probably would have from the perspective of having watched the match, given that he did in fact Force it). I would not have even Misstepped his Delver had I had a better hand. His deck is loaded with 1-casts, and Delver is one of the least scary. Had I not been able to back up the Misstep with Snapcaster, I may have saved it, hoping to draw out of it through other means. Also, if he has another Delver and a Misstep, he may not have chosen to play a Misstep he had, given that my list has a number of Brainstorms, etc., which he could counter to further disrupt me after I mulled. In truth, I think his Force of Will, removing Gush, was probably wrong. Delver is one of the worst cards in his deck, and he only has ~35% chance of flipping it each turn. Perhaps it was his only threat (which makes sense given the course of the game, but then it means he should have mulliganned).
Ex. 2 — I think that Top was correct, despite the Crypt. With all the shuffle effects I had access to, it meant that my card selection would increase dramatically (you are correct that it was not card advantage per se; I misspoke). With the increased card selection, I thought I would be able to find the Explosives or another Trinket Mage, before I hit critical damage with Crypt. Granted that I saved a lot of deserved damage from Crypt, I did in fact hit a Trinket Mage, the potential lack of which was a calculated risk because my hand was so bad without Top. In the end, you’ll notice that I Topped several times to find multiple unnecessary lands atop my library.
Ex. 5 – You’re right, I didn’t have a Titan, so maybe the Cavern was bad. It ended up allowing me to resolve a Trinket Mage, which may not have resolved without the Caverns. Hard to argue from a counterfactual whether my play was correct, though.
Ex. 4 – I think you’re right here. I should’ve shuffled away the Brainstorm. I could justify this play by saying that Brainstorm does some additional work putting cards from my hand back on my deck (unlike Top), or that it’s blue and sets me up to use Force for free (which it did, even though I never needed to make this play), but I agree that the redundancy of Top and Brainstorm probably means that I should’ve gone for another random draw.
Ex. 3 – The fateseal ability on Jace would have traded the tempo gained by a bounced Delver for looking at the top card of his library. I agree that the play I made was right and that I could have (should have) arrived at this conclusion faster, but, as you say, meh.
Funny thing is — on a rewatch, I actually think my keep in Game 1 was bad, and that I just got lucky. As for the Mana Crypt in Game 2, that was lucky as well; I assumed I had to play in a riskier way than I did. His keep must have been not very good, which permitted me enough space to putz around.
Thanks for the comments. I don’t doubt you wouldn’t take the time to think through them and write them out if you didn’t enjoy the videos.
The correct play is not always one set thing like these people try to say. The game can be won many different ways. Thats what’s fun about Magic. That guy complained about how long it took to play and discuss things, yet didn’t mind writing a novel about it. These people are comical with their criticisms on the content.
Bobby: as long as these people include basically every player who plays magic at a high level, I think I will continue to use the terminology. You might not want to read the rest of this post, it being a novel.
PW: Thanks for the reaction. I think we mostly disagree on how big of a threat the delver is. His deck is actually quite threat light, he plays 4 delvers and 3 goyfs as main threats back up by a few random beats of 3 snapcasters and 2 predators in the “late game”. It seems to me that his gameplan resolves around producing a threat (and i guess he thinks delver is the best, seeing it is his 4-of threat) and protecting it. He really can’t mulligan hands that do that. Also, three flying damage a turn is a lot in a format in which people regulary hurt themselves. In this matchup he really needs to produce a clock, otherwise your cardadvantage engines such as jace, archmage and even trinket mage or else a titan will just take over the game.
There also is the point that mental missteps does not counter a whole lot of cards you play he cares about besides the misstep. I guess it counters a sol ring, a spell snare, maybe a mana crypt. You mention things like brainstorm, but I think he is fine with you casting spells like brainstorm if he has a clock, he will just stop your business spells. I am pretty sure he snap missteps any misstep directed at a delver with most hands in most match ups.
About the top: your hand was pretty bad without the top, but with the explosives he would have had no clock on you and he was apparently out of threats, otherwise he probably would not force. I also think that the odds of finding 3x lands twice are pretty low and that the jace and brainstorm you found topping the first time would have enabled you to get rid of the lands, though of course, we did not know what was on top. I general I think you would me much more favored giving a clear board then he.
I guess we also disagree on the misstep play against a delver. I would always misstep the delver, because this match up seems like a fish-control match up. He has to produce a threat and disrupt you long enough/protect it long enough for it to kill you, otherwise you are very likely to just take over. Misstepping a delver seems like the most value you can get out of it in the early game.
I still think your keep was fine in game 1. You might not get there, but I am not sure if the odds of finding a better hand on 6 are higher then the odds of getting there.
His keep game 2 seemed fine to me. Had you not had one of your missteps, he could have had a decent clock on you, he could draw some cards with gush and would have a force to stop a key spell down the line. He can’t really mulligan because his hand has only 1 threat, seeing as he plays only 7.
Turns out that Glen Elendra Archmage is a Nombo with Grafdigger’s Cage. Who’d have thunk it?