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Simon Says #42: Refuse to Lose (GTC 8-4)
Posted on March 28, 2013 by Simon Goertzen
Simon Goertzen Simon Goertzen is a pro Magic player whose prominent tournament successes include winning Pro Tour San Diego in 2010. In 2012 Simon began providing coverage of European MtG events, including Grands Prix.
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Nice Draft as always.
Awesome content Simon, thanks. It took me lots of time and mental training not to tilt when my deck seems to do everything in its power to screw me.
against Boros in round three id think midnight recovery would help you much more then shadow slice since creature attrition is key there as it was verse Orzov.
Very good plays and a very hard lesson to learn. Though i feel i play better from behind and am prone to more mistakes when i think i have the game won. My brain gets lazy if the game looks easy where i tend to sharpen when a bit behind.
Excellent videos.
havent actually played before, just watch the videos, but does the holy mantle’s protection from creatures not allow you to block it at all or just prevent whatever creature it’s on from taking damage from creatures? cause if the latter, couldnt you have blocked it and then smited it?
Creatures with protection from X can’t be blocked by X. If X happens to be “creatures”, then they can’t be blocked by creatures (so they can’t be blocked at all).
Great content! I was wondering in general what your opinion is on keeping those 1-land hands with lots of potential if you hit another land or two. Do you think it depends mostly on the matchup?
Amazing content as usual. You got me into GTC draft with your last video, and I experimented heavily with your strategy. Open guilds are very powerful, and spire tracer beatdown sure does tilt people. Anyway, I enjoyed this draft, would have drafted similarly, and think you played through the mulligans well. I agree with you that the game vs Dimir/Orzhov was lost by not Death’s Approaching his 1/1, creating some future forced inefficient uses of removal. But I think that just shows how valuable your careful and considered strategical evaluation/playmaking increases your match win percentage. My personal favorite draft video author. Looking forward to the next one. Thanks.
When I first saw you sideboarding in Game 1, I thought you went absolutely crazy. You seemed to follow a presumption that Dormi is the only threat you need to deal with. I would rather just hope he will not draw it than siding three cards that appart from dealing some damage to Domri will do only a little work for you.
When I think about it again your approach was probably correct, especialy since the rest of his deck was really mediocre. Not 100% sure about Executioner’s Swing though.
Wow, Simon, you’re a pretty smart guy!
Great content as usual. Thank you.
In the final game of match two was there a reason not to use Death’s Approach on his Guardian of the Gateless? It becomes a 1/1 and then your Ballustrade Spy can attack into it. If he moves the Riot Gear over to the Guardian the next turn then you can attack in with your Deathcult Rogue and if he ever double blocks he makes his Guardian a 0/1 even with the Riot Gear.
Maybe it’s slightly worse to Orzhov Charm, but it was unlikely that he had that with one or zero cards in hand and having not used it before then.
Wow, people are really blown away by this content. It’s fine, don’t get me wrong. Your opponents weren’t the strongest, though. You pointed this out yourself at least in the first match. And in the second, Shadow Alley Denizen is already a very marginal card that you’d almost never play. And he kept them in after sideboarding as vanilla 1/1s. I guess we can all get short on playables.
Oh, and I’m still not sure about your evaluation of Razortip Whip
I can see the argument for bringing them in against the Orzhov mirror, but it still seems quite weak. It’s a cheap spell for extort and it grinds them a little, sure. Zarichi Tiger seems like a much more reasonable sb card since it negates a lot of the opponent’s extorting and blocks the small Orzhova creatures quite well.
@Martin:
The thing with Simon Says is that he explains much of his thought process and that’s both fullof insight and just plain genius sometimes in predicting moves and planning accordingly. It doesn’t matter how good his opponents at one given moment are because it’s not a show-down video but rather educational.
I’ve been bumping into the same issues haha, thanks for putting this out there!
Great stuff to watch when MTGO is down for maintenance ^^.