Standard: Naoki Shimizu's Bant Flash

Of the PTQ winners in the last post, probably the coolest deck is this thing by famous UG master Naoki Shimizu:

2012-style Bant Control decks had, like, Thragtusk and Farseek. Shimizu's deck plays 4 Advent of the Wurm and 3 Unsummon instead of those cards.

There are some defensive creatures in the sideboard, but the maindeck uses only 5 sorcery-speed cards (2 Supreme Verdict and 3 Augur of Bolas). Basically, Shimizu played a dedicated Snapcaster Mage deck to qualify for the pro tour:

  25 lands (with no "ability lands")
  15 card draw (counting Snapcasters and Augurs)
  5 creatures
  12 removal (including 4 bounce effects)
  3 counterspells

Shimizu beat a Zombie deck in the finals of a PTQ near Kobe. Here's a fun sample hand:

Standard: PTQ Theros win scoreboard

Compiling the winning decks from this page, here's a scoreboard of what decks have won the most spots at PT Theros:

Deck	W	Places
Junk Rites	8	South Carolina, British Columbia, Maryland, Kansas, Florida, MTGO, Ontario, New Hampshire
Jund	8	Mississippi, Connecticut, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey, Hawaii, Washington, Nebraska
Gruul	6	New York, New Mexico, Alberta, Ontario, MTGO, Washington
UWR Flash	5	MTGO, MTGO, Arkansas, California, Massachusetts
BWR Aristocrats	5	Texas, Ontario, Oklahoma, Montana, British Columbia
Red	4	MTGO, California, MTGO, California
Bant Auras	4	New York, Maine, Virginia, Oregon
Big Naya	3	Japan, Tennessee, Iowa
Naya Humans	2	Alberta, Manitoba
Esper Control	2	North Carolina, Michigan
UG Quirion Dryad	1	Arizona
Humans Rites	1	Japan
Bant Flash	1	Japan
Rakdos	1	Nebraska
GB	1	Idaho
Junk Aristocrats	1	MTGO

Notably few PTQ wins for Big Naya or Junk Aristocrats. All 8 of the recorded "Jund PTQs" were in the States.

Modern: Spanky kc's Restore Balance

A cool deck from these DE results:

This works a bit like the Living End deck -- the ideal plan is to suspend a Greater Gargadon, use a cascade spell to get Restore Balance, and then sacrifice all your permanents before it resolves. (The cycling creatures, which get reanimated in the Living End deck, are only here as "draw a card" spells that you can't cascade into.)

You could play this instead of Living End if you think destroying all the lands is better than getting a bunch of 3/4s, but you need to be luckier with this deck and draw one of 4 Greater Gargadons for the plan to work. This looks like a budget deck and weak to Remand, so we'll see if it keeps winning.

Finance: Grading the M14 Mythics

(modified from the great MythicSpoiler.com)

There are 10 new mythics and 3 reprinted mythics in Magic 2014. I ranked the new ones by their chance of being good in standard:

Chandra (60%). The point of this would be to +1, survive to untap, and then start getting a free card a turn. It wouldn't go in a 19 mountain aggro deck, and the +0 doesn't interact well with counterspells or Bonfires. Probably a Farseek deck is best; Jund could be adapted to play some cheap blockers -- Elvish Visionary?

Shadowborn Demon (50%). I had this much lower until I read Owen Turtenwald's M14 piece. "Destroy target creature" less powerful in current standard than it sounds, but Owen points out that sacrificing creatures is pretty easy.

Scourge of Valkas (25%). Obviously this does nothing today, but if, say, two good cheap dragons are printed in the next block, Scourge of Valkas will start looking real.

Garruk, Caller of Beasts (25%). A sideboard card for a hypothetical Bant. I don't know if people will want more than two copies.

Archangel of Thune (10%). You'd need, like, Sol Wardens and Soulmenders to make this work -- creatures that can gain life for zero mana.

Kalonian Hydra (5%). Wolfir Silverheart is underplayed, but this does so much less than Wolfir Silverheart.

Rise of the Dark Realms (1%). I'm not sure how much play 7BB for "Win the game" would see.

Devout Invocation (1%). If you have seven mana and a lot of untapped creatures, there are other cards that just win you the game.

Windreader Sphinx (1%). It's tough to see where this does more than Angel of Serenity / Sphinx's Revelation / Aetherling.

Primeval Bounty (0%). You'd have to be playing a very slow deck with a lot of creatures in it somehow.


The "good mythics" are Chandra and Shadowborn Demon, which will open at (rightfully) high prices.

The mythic I might speculate is Scourge of Valkas -- I'd want to buy low in August and then hope for a Dragon deck in standard by 2014. But the price might not go low enough -- Scourge of Valkas has casual appeal and other people might be making the same play as me.

My plan for now is to sell every mythic rare I open.

Pauper: Rebel Post

Rebel Cloudpost decks have started showing up in the Pauper DE results:

This deck by xin30hp was the first to appear, and so far it's the only 4-0 list we've seen. It breaks down into 24 lands + 7 mana artifacts, 13 searchers, 7 removal, 1 Standard Bearer, and 8 rebels you don't really want to draw. The creature curve lines up at 4 / 10 / 8.

Rebels and Cloudposts have always been legal in Pauper, but, as Carlos Gutierrez points out, it's only since Modern Masters that Bound in Silence has been a common.

(For reference: forum threads from 2012 discussing early Rebel decks with Cloudpost and Kaervek's Torch, thread from 2013 worrying about the Temporal Fissure matchup.)

The idea is to play t1 Cloudpost, t2 searcher, t3 Glimmerpost and search. I could see fast decks losing to Aven Riftwatcher every turn, and I could see slow decks losing to the card advantage of getting, like, 10 creatures into play without depleting your hand.

The price of MTGO Cloudposts doubled this week.

The Prophetic Prism / Kaervek's Torch package hasn't been seen in other rebel decks (many run Bonesplitter) but it sort of shows off how perfect the mana-base is here. It should be fun to see if Syncopate Rebels or Faith's Fetters Rebels or Dawnglare Invoker Rebels ever catches on online.

Limited: M14 common synergy and strategies

UPDATE: Instead of this post, please try reading pick orders by Frank Karsten and Owen Turtenwald. Karsten and Turtenwald are top pros who wrote based on a lot of experience; the post below is just my guesswork from reading the spoiler before the set was released.

GW Slivers: Probably the best three common slivers are Predatory Sliver, Sentinel Sliver, and Hive Stirrings.  There are common Slivers in red, but they are not as good.

RB Aggro: There aren't many "bears" in M14, but the best ones are probably Child of Night, Corpse Hauler, and Goblin Shortcutter. Those plus Festering Newt should go well with Lightning Talons and the red finisher commons (Lava Axe, Act of Treason, Seismic Stomp).

Auramancer and Quag Sickness.

Trained Condor and Scroll Thief: Drafting Condor is probably harder than drafting Tricks of the Trade was, but this is still cool.

UR Archaeomancer: Stuff like Essence Drain and Murder made Archaeomancer best in UB for M13, but M14 doesn't have as many common black targets for Archaeomancer. It can still recur stuff like Chandra's Outrage and Lava Axe.

Pick this early.

Blue Control: The general weakness of the creatures in M14 means "durdle cards" like counterspells and Divination are good, and it makes Disperse good by forcing people into auras like Mark of the Vampire and Trollhide.

Big Green: There isn't anything like Timberpack Wolf or Centaur Courser at common in M14; the best green cards are the Llanowar Elf, Hunt the Weak, and Sporemound. Rootwalla instead of Yeva's Forcemage also makes green a mana-hungry colour. Verdant Haven should be very playable now.

Things I don't recommend:

- 5-colour green. The fixing is there (Verdant Haven and Shimmering Grotto), but there are no gold cards, so all the bombs in this set cost heavy coloured mana and aren't really splashable.
- UW flyers. This strategy works better when there are exalted creatures in the set. In M14, UW flyers will just mean attacking for 1 with Seacoast Drake and Griffin Sentinel. The best blue common (Trained Condor) encourages you to play a bunch of non-flyers.
- GR Advocate of the Beast. There are only two common beasts in the set.
- White weenie. Master of Diversion will make people try this deck, but the common white attackers are pretty bad in this set.

Nice Play: Hetrick casts turn-two Snapcaster

I think it's widely known that turn-two Snapcaster should be played more often, but I don't think many people know when to do it. Here's when to do it.

"Yeah, I think I'm on the Snap plan."

M1G2 of these videos, stuck on two lands, Michael Hetrick plays his 2/1 flash creature on his Scapeshift opponent's EOT. It's a chance to rule the board against a nearly-creatureless deck, and it's a potential third land via Path to Exile. Good play.


In M3G2, Hetrick makes another nice play by waiting to use Tectonic Edge on his opponent's upkeep.

The opponent was playing the "Sharfman version" of Scapeshift, with Peer Through Depths and no Primeval Titans. On Hetrick's turn, he played a Tectonic Edge and considered the opponent's open mana.

"I'm sure he has, like, Peer Through Depths, so it's not entirely an extra tun [gained by land destruction]. I think it's worth it.

"We're gonna pass, though, and do it on his upkeep, depending on if he Peers."

[Pass turn. Opponent plays nothing. Opponent's upkeep, use Tectonic Edge.]

"He didn't Peer. I just wanted him to not know if we were gonna do it, if he did cast the Peer."

Limited: M14 Common Instants

Creature pump:

Get ready to play around this thing.

W Pay No Heed
1W Show of Valor

2W Fortify

1R Thunder Strike

G Giant Growth
G Ranger's Guile

Removal:
WW Celestial Flare
1U Disperse
2U Frost Breath
B Wring Flesh
R Shock
2RR Chandra's Outrage
1G Plummet

Flash creatures:
B Vile Rebirth
3U Nephalia Seakite

Counterspells:
1U Negate
1U Essence Scatter

1UU Cancel

Other things:
1B Altar's Reap

R Smelt

G Fog

1G Naturalize

(To scan card texts quicker, consult this Gatherer search + Nephalia Seakite.)

Modern: Composition of Melira Pod

Using decks from the last two Modern GPs, this pre-Kansas PE, and a random LSV 4-0 list, here's a grid comparing recent Melira Pod maindecks:

Breakdown of a normal Melira deck:

• 23 lands (3 Gavony Township, 8 fetch, 8 dual, and 4 basic)
• 8 mana creatures (4 Birds of Paradise, 3 Deathrite Shaman, 1 Wall of Roots)
• 7 creature tutors (4 Birthing Pod, 3 Chord of Calling)
• 6 persisty creatures (2 Voice of Resurgence, 4 Kitchen Finks)
• 10 combo creatures (1 Viscera Seer, 2 Melira, 1 Cartel Aristocrat, 1 Witness, 1 Metamorph, 2 Redcap, 1 Ranger of Eos, 1 Reveillark)
• 3 disrupty creatures (1 Qasali Pridemage, 1 Spellskite, 1 Orzhov Pontiff)
• 2 disruption spells (Abrupt Decay or Thoughtseize)

This totals 59 / 60 slots that are quite consistent in all the Melira Pod decks listed.

Distinctions of certain Melira Pod lists:
- Dan Macdonald's list predates the "Pardee template," missing Voice of Resurgence among other stuff.
- The 60th card in Sam Pardee's list is the 2nd Viscera Seer. Pardee has Abrupt Decay instead of Thoughtseize main.
- Pyromaniac4290 played Pardee's 60 cards from GP Portland.
- LSV's version played the 4th Deathrite Shaman over the Wall of Roots, 3rd and 4th Voice of Resurgence over Spellskite and Qasali Pridemage. He played Thoughtseize instead of Abrupt Decay. His 60th card was a Varolz.
- VFS played 2 Abrupt Decay and 2 Thoughtseize, cutting a Deathrite Shaman. He also ran the 2nd Viscera Seer over the Cartel Aristocrat and an Entomber Exarch over the Ranger of Eos.

Distinctions of Manfield's list:

- Dual land over the 3rd Gavony Township.

- Abrupt Decay instead of Thoughtseize.

- 60th card was the 3rd Voice of Resurgence.

Melira Pod decks are all pretty similar right now.

Breakdown of Ari Lax's Kiki Pod deck:

• 23 lands (2 Township, 7 fetch, 12 duals, 2 basic)
• 9 mana creatures (4 Birds of Paradise, 4 Noble Hierarch, 1 Wall of Roots)
• 6 creature machines (4 Pod, 2 Domri Rade)
• 9 combat creatures (2 Voice of Resurgence, 1 Tarmogoyf, 3 Kitchen Finks, 3 Restoration Angel)
• 8 combo creatures (1 Phantasmal Image, 1 Fauna Shaman, 2 Deceiver Exarch, 1 Redcap, 2 Kiki-Jiki, 1 Zealous Conscripts)
• 5 disrupty creatures (1 Spellskite, 1 Qasali Pridemage, 1 Izzet Staticaster, 1 Linvala, 1 Glen Elendra Archmage)

This is the same template but basically all different spells, beyond the Bird-Finks-Pod shell. Two big differences: Noble Hierarch instead of Deathrite Shaman, Restoration Angel instead of Chord of Calling.

Standard: Composition of Jund decks

Here's a table of successful Jund decks over the last couple months. The four decks on the left are Reid Duke from GP Miami, Paul Cheon and Jose Francisco Silva from this PE, and Owen Turtenwald from his last Jund article. (The other decks in the table are pre-Voice of Resurgence.)

Here are the common elements of our four "up-to-date" Jund maindecks:

   25 lands
    (20 duals + 2 Kessig Wolf Run + 3 other)
   7 "small spells" (4 Farseek + Arbor Elf / Rakdos Keyrune / Ground Seal)
   14 creatures
    (2 Olivia + 4 Huntmaster + 4 Thragtusk + 2 Garruk Primal Hunter + 2 other)
   7 removal spells
    (1 Tragic Slip + 2 Putrefy + 4 others)
   3 Bonfire of the Damned
   1 Rakdos' Return

This formula sums to 57 slots; most of the decks spend the last 3 wildcard slots on "big spells" -- the last Bonfire, extra Olivia or Rakdos' Return, or the potentially-big Mizzium Mortars.

We can say 25 lands / 7 small spells / 7 removal / 21 big spells is the usual formula for standard Jund.

Duke's Miami deck follows this formula the closest:
- His 2 "other" creatures were Vampire Nighthawks.
- His 4 "other" removal were 2 Pillar of Flame, 1 Abrupt Decay, and a 2nd Tragic Slip.
- His 3 wildcard spells were Bonfire #4, Olivia #3, and Rakdos' Return #2.
- His manabase was 22 duals, 2 Wolf Run, and 1 Cavern of Souls.
- His "small spells" were the 4 Farseek, 2 Ground Seal, and 1 Rakdos Keyrune.

Of the four decks we're looking at, Cheon's is the outlier -- it plays 2 Liliana, 2 Arbor Elf, and 3 Forest, which are all "throwbacks" to pre-Voice of Resurgence.

The patterns are a bit different if we look at players' 75s instead of their 60s:

Counting sideboards, our Jund decks all need access to 3 Ground Seal, 2 Vampire Nighthawk, 2 Liliana, and 3 Pillar of Flame, plus some mixture of 5 discard spells. The average sideboard is mostly taken up by filling out those quotas, with a few slots left for big creatures or extra removal or Underworld Connections. Our formula of 25 / 7 / 7 / 21 expands to something like 25 / 10 / 11 / 24, leaving only 5 flexible spaces for sweet sideboard tech.

Reid Duke is really running a "modest" Jund deck here -- he skips out on stuff like Sire of Insanity and Mizzium Mortars, but he includes all 4 copies of Ground Seal and Tragic Slip. The most glamourous thing about the deck was probably that it had 2 Ruric Thar instead of Vraska or whatever, but the Ruric Thars never even made it into the text coverage.

Probably the "big mana" engine makes sideboarding more important with Jund than with other standard decks -- if only 28/60 of the deck is action spells, swapping out 6 cards can make a big difference in what the deck does (unlike in a deck with 40 creatures).

Standard: GP Miami Grinder Scoreboard

Tallying up the undefeated grinder lists:
  5 Reanimator (2 Four-Colour, 2 Junk, 1 Human)
  3 Big Naya
  2 Jund
  1 UWR Resto
  1 UW Resto
  1 BWr Aristocrats
  1 Jund Aggro

- Benjamin Battle's UW Flash ran a Runechanter's Pike for 12 creatures + 2 Moorland Haunts. He only had 2 Supreme Verdict in the deck, with another 2 Supreme Verdict and 2 Terminus in the sideboard.

- Trevor Holmes' Naya had 4 Farseek and 3 Domri Rade co-existing in the maindeck somehow, with a creature curve of 4-4-4-9-3-2.

- Michael Brady's Jund had 2 Zhur-Taa Druid. Robert Pompa's Jund had 2 Thundermaw Hellkite and 1 Staff of Nin.

- Joey Dial's Jund Aggro is the 4 Spike Jester deck that's shown up online. It has a creature curve 8-18-0-8, with 6 burn spells and 20 land, and the obligatory 4 Domri Rade in the sideboard.

Fun: Simon Goertzen introduces himself

A minute or two into this Turbofog(!) video:

"For those that don't know what I'm doing, I'm Simon Goertzen, I won a Pro Tour once."

Goertzen has a terrific haircut here, and he prints his name across the bottom in a font straight from the MS Wordart Truck:

Running his two names together leaves a particular Magic-stream slur between the "si" and the "ertzen."

EDIT: Goertzen chooses to draw first in game 2, which is a pretty cool play with TurboFog.

"I'm playing this because it's April Fools."

He also hits these three cards with Jace, Architect of Thought, when he -2's to dig for a land:

Standard: Xathrid Necromancer Aristocrats for future standard

From the M14 spoiler, Xathrid Necromancer seems like a really good constructed card.

Rotlung Reanimator was amazing in standard about ten years ago -- just for fun, here's a Zombie deck that won French Nationals in 2003:

Now, here is a deck played by megafone and ar7ic that can put many Humans into the graveyard and can also make good use of Zombie tokens:

Human Aristocrats
4 Champion of the Parish, 4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel Aristocrat, 4 Knight of Infamy, 2 Skirsdag High Priest
3 Silverblade Paladin, 2 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
2 Zealous Conscripts
5 removal
2 varying slots
24 lands (including 4 Cavern of Souls)

This deck uses Champion of the Parish and Cavern of Souls for synergy with the "Human" creature type on stuff like Doomed Traveler and Cartel Aristocrat. It goes light on normal "token combo stuff" (with 0 Blood Artist, 0 Sorin, and only 2 Lingering Souls), instead playing "pump creatures" (Knight of Infamy and Silverblade Paladin) to attack with a giant Champion of the Parish or a giant flying Vampire.

Xathrid Necromancer fits this deck's strength -- it is a Human; it cashes in on Humans; and it makes lots of tokens. Here's a sketch of an all-in Aristocrats combo deck for summer standard, using the same WBr Humans mana-base:

Future Human Aristocrats
4 Champion of the Parish, 4 Doomed Traveler
4 Cartel Aristocrat, 4 Blood Artist, 2 Gather the Townsfolk, 3 Skirsdag High Priest
4 Xathrid Necromancer, 4 Lingering Souls
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat, 2 Sorin
3 removal
24 lands

This weakens the mana-fixing power of Cavern of Souls a lot, so it might be optimal with something like 12 shocklands, 4 Clifftop Retreat, 4 Isolated Chapel, and 4 Plains. I've called Blood Artist weak, but sacrificing creatures will be much more affordable when Xathrid Necromancer is legal.

Here is a fun turn-4 goldfish:

T1 Champion of the Parish.
T2 Gather the Townsfolk, attack for 3.
T3 Xathrid Necromancer, attack for 4 with Champion.
T4 Blood Artist, Cartel Aristocrat.

Attack for 5 with Champion of the Parish. Sacrifice 4 Humans to drain 4 life and make 4 Zombies. Sacrifice 4 Zombies to drain the last 4 life.

Wackier options include Intangible Virtue, Bloodthrone Vampire, Disciple of Bolas, and Maw of Obzedat. Brian Braun-Duin sketched a WB Humans deck with Mutavault and suggested the glorious option of Increasing Devotion. A more sensible option might be to play a 4c Human Aristocrats deck with Avacyn's Pilgrim and Mayor of Avabruck, using the Necromancer just for value instead of for combo potential.

Standard: Online Scoreboard, June 21-27

(Decklists grabbed from the righthand column of MtgOnline.com.)

Here's a table of all the 4-0 decks (DE) or 6-win decks (PE) from June 21 to 27:

Deck	Count	Players
Junk Rites	10	JFumerton79, Exokell, L1X0, YS, CharLy, 88trample, Enrico, MagicPlayerDudeBro, SethDrone, L1X0
Saito Rg	9	tayman227, vsk, hot milk, Azazel314, syrup16g, TheNoodle812, Devil, megafone, vsk
Jund	7	Boin, dailyllama, juppal, nitechill, bluedragon123, Chlywly1, ProtossX
UWR Resto	7	BigAnnie, Bluecry, Zorrrba, MituliakV, Cryptic, Cryptic, Mingpac
Naya Humans	4	ThomasH, the adult swim, frankkarsten, Diem4x
UWR Slow	4	Crossfire42, bratschnik, Born2Win, Carl
Big Naya	3	Blinky010, AKMiD, BytorAndTheSnowdog
Bant Control	3	trunks132, reiderrabbit, Trailerpark
BWr Aristocrats	2	i b TRUE, xLeitix
Naya Blitz	2	Silver Death, HaM 187
Junk Aristocrats	2	MagicLair, enzoreal
UWB Alchemy Rites	2	pelli, pelli
Bant Auras	2	Lister1991, RReigle82
Jund Creatures	2	Xeroo, battleofjace
Red	1	trog3r
4C Alchemy Rites	1	zhuhao
4C Faithless Rites	1	usokui3
GW Tokens	1	armel
Surgeon Generals	1	Scream
Jund Blitz	1	AmericanO
Farseek Naya	1	duparcqG
GB Mutilate	1	Ofelia
Prime Speaker Bant	1	XxForgexX
BWr Human Aristocrats	1	ar7ic
4C Human Aristocrats	1	Vicalis
URw Nivix Cyclops	1	le fondue

The three players in bold (YS, ThomasH, i b TRUE) won PEs with their decks.

The four players in italics (L1X0, vsk, Cryptic, pelli) are the players who appeared twice.

This table counts 71 decks that 4-0'ed (or similar), and it gives roughly the same archetype breakdown as the MtgGoldfish stats that include 3-1 decks:

Combining some different decks into rough categories, we can make this pie chart of what standard decks are doing well on Magic Online:

Compared to the scoreboard I made in early June:
- Aristocrats decks and Big Naya decks are performing worse now.
- Fast Red decks (now with Madcap Skills!) and Fast Naya decks are performing better now.
- Junk Rites and UWR are still the best (though the UWR lists have changed a lot).

Nice Play: Michael Hetrick versus Centaur Healer

From M2G2 of this Domri Naya event, Michael Hetrick has to pick a turn three play against a Prime Speaker Bant deck:

I wouldn't mind playing Reckoner, but I still think I would rather have Domri in this situation.... Actually, that's not 100% true. If I Domri +1, we're getting a long game advantage, but he already has the advantage in the long game.

We could Mortars his guy and play Experiment One and attack for three. That also prevents him from Resto-ing the Healer.... Yeah, I guess that's true. Then we could play around the Resto next turn with Rampager.

If we just Domri'ed, we'd be playing a control role, which I don't think we should really be doing. Yeah, we're not gonna do that.

There is a slight downside [to Mortars + Experiment One]. We could save [Mortars] -- but I don't think it's that significant, especially since pretty soon we're gonna have Domri and our Reckoner, which can suffice as removal.

Hetrick should be relieved that it was a Healer instead of a brick-wall Loxodon Smiter, but I like his decision to play Mortars and Experiment One, and I like the logic behind it.

(He's also completely bottle-necked at three mana, so playing Domri to find extra creatures probably won't
do much to win him the game.)

The one other thing I'd consider is just attacking first to see if the opponent cares about Flinthoof Boar. We could do Rampager + Experiment One on a block (since that signals no Restoration Angel) or just deal 3 and cast Reckoner otherwise.

Video: Highlights from Sam Pardee playing Junk Aristocrats

(Working through a backlog of CFB videos.)

Here are some highlights from this recorded 8-man of Sam Pardee playing Junk Aristocrats.

M1G1 -- Sideboarding vs. Naya Aggro

To make room for more removal and Unflinching Courage, Pardee takes out all the Blood Artist and all the Sorin from his deck.

I like Abrupt Decay. I typically like cutting Blood Artist, because -- Blood Artist is really good when we're trading resources, which is what we want to be doing in this matchup, but it doesn't actually make us any ... It makes trading resources better for us, but it doesn't help us successfully trade resources, if that makes sense.

Cartel Aristocrat helps us successfully trade resources -- we're trading a Spirit token to give it protection to hopefully trade for one of his guys. So that's a trade we're willing to do. Blood Artist makes that trade more profitable for us, but we don't need those trades to be more profitable; we just need them to be happening. So I like shaving Blood Artist out.

I think Unflinching Courage is good. I think Sorin's also not very good in this matchup, because he's very slow, especially on the draw. I like Garruk because he can kill -- if they have Fiend Hunter, if they have Avacyn's Pilgrim -- there's just a lot of little guys he can kill.

This seems like a great plan for on the draw versus Naya aggro -- if you make the entire deck about 1-for-1 trades, something like Lingering Souls ends up taking over.

Blood Artist is sort of a combo card in a deck that often wants to scrape card advantage instead of making a combo kill. Making a lot of creatures and pumping them with Sorin and Gavony Township is the "real plan," and Blood Artist just speeds up the kill by one turn when that plan is working. It creates the illusion of a lower creature curve (since it's technically a 2-drop), but I wonder if Selesnya Charm or something would just be more effective.

M2G1 -- Picking a turn two creature

So here's the tricky spot -- whether you play Aristocat or Voice. If they have access to Pillar of Flame (I guess he could still be Jund), it's typically better to play the Aristocrat first, because you don't want to get your Voice killed, so that's why I'm doing that here. The other, secondary, reason is that they're going to hit for the same amount this turn, so it doesn't really matter.

[The opponent plays another GB land and passes.] I guess if I'd played Voice, he would have had to main-phase his [spell] -- I'm guessing he's going to cast a Grisly Salvage here.

This was just a sensible play and good reasoning. Aristocrat before Voice to guarantee you'll get the Elemental.

M3G1 -- What to do with Sorin

The two Searing Spears in the graveyard are, of course, for the Voice of Resurgence in graveyard and the Elemental it made. Pardee untaps and plays Sorin on turn 4 here:

I'm just going to play it and plus it. He could kill it, potentially, with a Warleader's Helix, in which case I'd rather have minus'ed it, but it's not that likely that he has it -- they usually only run 1 or 2 Helixes -- and even in that case, I think I'll be in good shape.

Basically I think it's much more likely that he has something like a Snapcaster for his Searing Spear to kill Sorin, but maybe that just doesn't matter that much and I should just do it anyway. No, I'm gonna plus. I can always minus next turn, unless he has the Warleader's Helix, which I don't think he does. I don't think he would have snap-killed that Voice token if he had a Warleader's Helix.

He goes back and forth on this one before deciding to +1 and make a token. I think the decision is very clear -- even with a power boost, his small army will not be much pressure for a UWR deck with 17 life and 5 cards. Generating a second army of Vampires should be done as quickly as possible.

The +1 is better against the Snapcaster turn that he sniffs out, but it's also better against most other possibilities: Supreme Verdict, Restoration Angel, or just Azorius Charm.

Other notes
- Pardee says that the deck's biggest problem is mana-flood. He plays 22 mana lands + 3 Gavony Township
- He boards out the Skirsdag High Priests against UW decks -- the logic being that sacrificing a Doomed Traveler to trigger Morbid is walking into Supreme Verdict.

Standard: Flinthoof Humans

Took this Naya Blitz deck with singleton sideboard to 8-0 in my last two events. Still a solid Standard archetype. pic.twitter.com/LRU85HxHzk
— Frank Karsten (@karsten_frank) June 25, 2013

Here's the list laid out in yesterday's winner's circle:

Creature curve 12-21-4-3, topping out at Frontline Medics and Ghor-Clan Rampagers. Zero removal, though the Medics and Firefist Strikers might let you "ignore" creatures you can't kill. Flinthoof Boars with only 8 mountains.

Pedro Carvalho asked about Hamlet Captain over Boar, and Karsten replied with a link to a deck by Andre Mueller.

@_megafone_ I still like Boar to grow Exp. One to 3/3. But you should check Andre Muller's PTQ T8 list: http://t.co/zZLgWGe5vl (1st post)
— Frank Karsten (@karsten_frank) June 25, 2013

4 Boros Elite, 4 Experiment One, 4 Champion of the Parish

4 Burning-Tree Emissary, 4 Mayor of Avabruck, 4 Lightning Mauler, 4 Flinthoof Boar, 3 Hamlet Captain, 1 Thalia
3 Kessig Malcontents
3 Ghor-Clan Rampager
2 Searing Spear
4 Cavern of Souls, 12 Shocklands, 4 M10 duals

That's a creature curve of 12-20-3-3, with 2 actual spells (Searing Spears) and the same 20 lands as Karsten's deck.

There is an 8-card difference between the two maindecks. Karsten has 2 extra Thalia, 2 Firefist Striker, and 4 Frontline Medic, where Mueller has 3 Hamlet Captain, 2 Searing Spear, and 3 Kessig Malcontents.

(Mueller also has an actual 4-of in his sideboard, to protect his Medic-less deck from Supreme Verdicts.)

With its superior 1-drops, Humans has sort of taken over from Saito-style Rg as the top Burning-Tree aggro deck in standard. Running Flinthoof Boar on a 3C Cavern of Souls mana base is bold tech from some very advanced players.

Writing: Against GP Vegas fluff-stats

I think it's pretty neat that 4500 people went to GP Vegas. Here are some complaints about an infographic that tried to illustrate what "4500 people" means.

Graphs that don't fit the numbers:

By the criteria of "most players over 4200," we can see that GP Vegas has about doubled the previous record. By "most players over zero," the numbers are much closer:

The category of "most people at a trading card game event" restricts it to between Magic and pseudo-Magic. I'm more surprised that there was ever such a big YuGiOh tournament than that 4500 people is a record.

The GP Vegas square is 70% taller than the GP Charlotte square, but it's also 70% wider than the GP Charlotte square. So a 70% increase in GP size is illustrated by a 189% increase in square size, so this graphic is pretty much a lie.

Meaningless reference points:

There are 16,000 cities in the US with a lower population than the attendance of GP Vegas.

This tells us that 16,000 communities are called "cities" despite having less than 5,000 people. If I consider a rock to be a city of 0 people, then there are literally millions of U.S. cities with a smaller population than GP Vegas.

The registered VIPs would be the 175th largest GP ever run.

This is kind of impressive if you know that there have been, like, 400 GPs, so the hypothetical "GP of VIPs" would be in the top half. But we do not know this. The "175th-largest GP ever run" is not really a benchmark for anything.

The pile of cards opened at the tournament would stack 455 feet high, which is taller than the 30th-largest building in Las Vegas.

Stacking cards in a column (or lining them end-to-end down the highway) doesn't tell me how many cards there are. What would be meaningful is if they said they were "opening enough cards to fill all the shelves at the StarCityGames warehouse" or if they were opening enough cards to fill every room in my apartment with cards.

Also, comparing the stack to the 30th-tallest building Vegas is completely silly. They could say, instead, that the stack of cards would be taller than the venue they were playing in, or that the stack of cards would be taller than the Wizards of the Coast building in Washington.

10 countries represented in the judging staff.

Probably there are more countries represented at pro tours. What would be interesting is how many countries were represented by players in the tournament.

GP Vegas Stats that were actually interesting:

- 1 of every 9 players in GP Vegas was from outside the U.S.

- 241 of each mythic rare expected (including 16 foil Tarmogoyfs).

- 160 judges (enough to staff every PT + Players' Champs + WMC this year).

- All 4 of the Level 5 judges active this weekend (2 judging, 1 playing, 1 in Bangkok).

Most unreal GP Vegas stat (from reddit): The # of cards opened at this GP is ~1/2 the size of the Alpha print run. http://t.co/D0wKEhYUnN
— Ari Lax (@armlx) June 21, 2013

Also the photo gallery in the coverage has some nice birds-eye shots of the whole tournament (plus the great Kyle Ryc drinking from a licorice straw.)

Limited: Modern Masters combat tricks

Beware of 1W.

Common instants to expect in combat:

1W Otherworldly Journey
1W Test of Faith
4W Gleam of Resistance

1U Spellstutter Sprite
1U Echoing Truth
2U Erratic Mutation
2U Pestermite

B Peppersmoke
2B Drag Down
1BB Horobi's Whisper

R Brute Force
1R Glacial Ray
1R Crush Underfoot
1R Fury Charm
3R Torrent of Stone
5R Fiery Fall

1G Echoing Courage

The cards in italics mostly won't be in people's decks. There are "Giant Growths" in all three Naya colours (Test of Faith, Echoing Courage, Brute Force). There is also a bunch of red and black instant removal.

Horobi's Whisper and Torrent of Stone both have non-mana splice costs, so an opponent with U untapped can still just cast Reach Through Mists and splice to kill a creature.

Commons to not get killed by:
2W Blinding Beam

5WW Ivory Giant

2B Deepcavern Imp
6B Absorb Vis

3RR Thundering Giant

These ones aren't pump spells or removal, but they can still surprise-kill you. Two of them are white commons that will tap all your guys.

Common counterspells to not walk into:
1U Spellstutter Sprite
UU Logic Knot
3UU Traumatic Visions

I don't know if many people really play these counterspells, but two of them have another mode, at least (Spellstutter Sprite as a 1/1 flyer and Traumatic Visions to dig for land).

Rebels that your opponent might search for:
(in order of how much to fear them)
Bound in Silence
Rathi Trapper and Saltfield Recluse
Amrou Seekers and Avian Changeling
Blightspeaker
Deepcavern Imp
Amrou Scout
Mothdust Changeling

3 of the searchable commons can shut down an attacker, and another 3 of them have 2-power and evasion.

A specific common that forces you to always block Mothdust Changeling:
(2U) Latchkey Faerie

Watch out for Latchkey Faerie!

Nice Play: LSV Street Spasms a 2/2

From M3G2 of this draft, here's Luis Scott-Vargas using Street Spasm for X=2 to kill a Tavern Swindler:

It's not that tough to see the play in retrospect, but in the moment, I'd been picturing "tap three for Ember Beast." I think my plan would have involved dying with Street Spasm in hand.

(For what it's worth, Ember Beast was a bad draw in approximately all nine games of this draft. A random 2/2 for 3 would have been better.)

Writing: Willy Edel teaches us to sideboard

Edel with tapped Thundermaw Hellkite.

Hopefully you've already read and loved Willy Edel's new Domri Naya article on CFB. The great thing is how flexible he comes off about decklists; he sounds like he's always trying different versions and different sideboard configurations. He always wins with the deck, but he always adapts to a new optimal build.

Here are Edel's words of wisdom about sideboarding with Domri Naya (and the irrelevance of "sideboard guides"):

More important than a sideboard guide, you need to keep three things in mind when sideboarding:
1 – Don’t sideboard so much that your deck will lose its identity.
2 – Keep a smooth mana curve—taking out all 2-drops for 5-drops isn’t good.
3 – Know what game you want to play and sideboard accordingly. You want to end the game ASAP? Are you the control deck? You want to play a grindy game?

These are just fundamentals but people (including me) miss them all the time.

Standard: Quack Quack's Immortal Servitude Aristocrats

I've seen a 3-1 version of this deck somewhere, but Quack Quack is known to be good at MTGO, so this 4-0 version is worth posting:

The creature curve here is 4/20/1, if you were wondering. The idea here must be a combo-kill with Blood Artist, because I don't see any Gavony Townships or Sorins or Garolz the Scar-Striped.

I am not sure what this deck does against Rest in Peace or how Elvish Visionary is better than 4/1 haste flying, but I just purchased 2 Immortal Servitude so I hope they go up in value.

By the end of summer I hope we see, like, Gruul War Chant Aristocrats.

Limited: More breakdown of the GP Providence finals draft

We can extrapolate a lot from the team draft chart for the GP Providence finals. All six players stuck to their original colours, to the point where they all maindecked their first four picks of the draft. I shuffled the chart around a bit to see how the decks came together.

Maindeck cards by set:

Alex John and Eric Berger each got only 6 cards out of pack 2 (Gatecrash) -- Berger because he wasn't in a Gatecrash guild, John because his neighbour Andrew Longo cut off UG.

In total, the players maindecked less of Gatecrash than the other sets, even though most of them were aiming for a Gatecrash guild (John for UG, Lax and McCullough for WR, and Phillipps for WB). The high Dragon's Maze count is inflated by the extra dual land in every pack of that set.

Maindeck cards by when they were picked:

Of his 18 "early picks," Longo played 14 -- every other player used 16 or 17. Longo hate-drafted a Mercurial Chemister, and he early-picked Steeple Roc, Inspiration, and Azorius Guildgate that all ended up missing the cut for his deck.

The late picks that made Longo's maindeck were Crosstown Courier, Deputy of Acquittals, Runner's Bane, Totally Lost, and an Azorius Keyrune -- all aggressive / tempo cards compared to the early picks he cut. Longo went 2-0 in this draft.

Dual lands:
2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 11

- The highest-picked land was a 2nd-pick Rakdos Guildgate that Eric Berger took to splash Toil // Trouble with.
- The lowest-picked land was a Boros Guildgate that went 11th to Ari Lax, after Matt McCullough passed it for a Towering Thunderfist.
- 3 of the 14 dual lands in the draft were not maindecked -- including the on-colour Azorius Guildgate that stayed in Longo's sideboard.

Mana artifacts:
4, 9, 10, 12, 12, 13, 14, 14, 14

- If we only count Cluestones and Keyrunes, the highest-picked mana artifacts went 4th and 9th to Alex John for his five-colour deck. John also 1st-picked a Prophetic Prism in Gatecrash.
- 5 of the 9 mana artifacts from this draft ended up in people's decks. Longo played the Azorius Keyrune he got as his last pick of the draft.

Out-of-colour picks:
(cards picked 12 or higher that were uncastable in the player's eventual deck)

- 4 of the 6 players ran straight two-colour decks (or two colours plus a split card).

- Even though he was in a Gatecrash guild (BW), Phillipps (2-0) picked up some red cards in Gatecrash while he was in front of the red drafters for a pack. Then he was behind the red drafters again in RTR so he stuck to retreated to his normal colours. Of course, his BW deck beat both the red drafters who had cut him off.

- McCullough (0-2) drafted RGW for pack one, but then he opened all RW cards in Gatecrash and settled in those colours. He also early-picked a Cartel Aristocrat and an Augur Spree, but he never got the black Guildgates or anything else to cast them.

- Lax drafted deep WR first two packs and cut some good anti-WR in the third pack. He had the option of going black after pack one, but he took Wojek Halberdiers over Killing Glare first pick of Gatecrash and only saw WR after that.

- Lax's first two picks were red cards, passing a Putrefy and 2 Viashino Firstblades -- presumably he's hoping for RG or RB from here. Then he got passed Viashino Firstblades (which he took over two Rakdos Drakes), so he and his teammate McCullough nearby both ended up drafting the battalion deck. Their decks were OK but they went 0-3 combined.

- The 3 Druid's Deliverance and 1 Downsize in the draft were all picked off-colour, presumably by people who didn't want to play against them.

- Three of the RtR guilds were basically undrafted (BR, GR, RU), while all five of the GTC guilds were drafted. WR was fought over but ended up supporting two decks. UG was fought over and did not end up supporting two decks.

Alex John's draft:

John (0-1) drafted UG cards for his first four picks, then had to choose between a Jelenn Sphinx (UW)  and Haunter of Nightveil (UB). He took the UB card and gave his neighbour Longo the Sphinx, which inadvertently turned Longo's GW draft into a GWU draft. John then saw some "big spells" (Beck // Call, Blast of Genius) and a Cluestone, giving him the option of a multi-colour power deck while passing Longo a bunch of "small spells" in green and blue (Simic Guildgate, 2 Runner's Bane). John also got cut when Eric Phillipps took off-colour blue spells (2 Wind Drake).

Longo then took all the UG in Gatecrash, cutting John off UG completely. John had to take some lands and some black spells. He ended up with only 4 Gatecrash spells in his deck.

John entered pack 3 with a UGBrw deck in progress, without many good spells but with 4 dual lands and a Prophetic Prism. His picks were Mizzium Mortars, Runewing, Voidwielder, a Keyrune, Izzet Charm, and a Guildgate. He ended up with kind of a ramp control deck that ran 17 lands + 3 mana artifacts, needing Gobbling Ooze and Spawn of Rix Maadi to boost the creature count.

Probably if there were an RGD draft format, five-colour decks would be built around early Axebane Guardians and Gatecreeper Vines. In DGR, though, you pick most of your deck before you can see if you get those cards, so a five-colour deck needs you to do stuff like Cluestone over Ubul Sar Gatekeepers and 1st-pick Prophetic Prism. In this case, those decisions made sense; John needed every Cluestone / Guildgate / Prism he found, but not having Axebane Guardians or Gatecreeper Vines still meant he had an absurdly high creature curve (0/1/2/1/4/4).

Both John's neighbours went 2-0 with fast creature decks.

Limited: GP Providence final draft diagrams

Using the awesome draft chart in coverage, here's a diagram of the GP Providence final draft and what colours people played.

And here's a diagram showing colours and first picks out of each pack.

Video Rec: Frank Karsten stalls and waits

Starting at about 1:03:00 of this stream archive, my favourite guy Frank Karsten (with help from Marijn Lybaert) plays a really patient game, sitting mana and regenerators while saving his spells for a few turns. Of course, he eventually gets a giant advantage out of playing spells at the right time, ending with the opponent giving a funny rant about topdecks and playing a hilariously ineffective Weapon Surge.

You'll also see Karsten repeatedly alt-tabbing to the screenshot of his deck, counting the win-cards left in his library as he stalls out the board.

Karsten psychs himself up to not attack, not play anything, and not cash out Cluestone.

Karsten's stream channel also has a pretty great highlights file.

Limited: Colourful version of Frank Karsten's draft diagram

In addition to the seven guys taking red, there's an unbroken chain here of five black drafters and another chain of four green drafters. Thoralf Severin "wins" the draft by having only one colour in common with each of his neighbours.

(Original in the GP Gothenburg coverage.)

Writing: Frank Karsten is a coverage hero

A man with good ideas.

GP Gothenburg this weekend might have the best text coverage ever. I read a lot more than I expected to, and a lot more than I normally read for a limited GP in Europe. Probably some of this is from Wizards pushing to make GP coverage more readable, but a lot was because the famously brainy Frank Karsten was doing text coverage.

Some gems:

- Tobi Henke asks pros about Keyrunes versus Cluestones. It's fun writing and an interesting and relevant question.

- Karsten takes a trial-winning five-colour deck and asks pros about some sample hands. Normally I find the trial-winning decklists a bit meaningless in limited or constructed. Karsten at least used one of them as a resource to have conversations about sealed.

- Henke asks a survey question (best common in sealed). Most pros have the same boring answer (without really explaining why), but Karsten and Denniz Rachid have some compelling answers at the end.

- Henke asks a tougher survey question. "Play or draw" is super-important but doesn't often get discussed. Henke gets good answers here from top players including play-or-draw expert Florian Koch.

- Karsten covers Kenny Oberg vs. Hannes Kerem. It looks like Oberg won on a tricky combat decision, baiting out some pump spells, and Oberg is quoted explaining this well. In an average limited match. Match write-ups now focus on the games that the players found interesting, whereas they used to try and name every spell played in every game.

- Karsten's interview with the Swedish WMC team was also really cool. I don't think most people hear about the WMC qualifiers other than for their own country + the United States. A team with three pros is fun and notable, plus they gave some good answers.

- Karsten drafts with Jan van der Vegt and Mark Dictus. The draft tables are much more useful to read than the traditional paragraphs walking through draft picks (i.e., inconvenient conversion of tables into prose form).

- Karsten lists out the two-card combos in DGR that he heard about, presented in beautiful visual side-by-side. My favourite is Greenside Watcher and Verdant Haven, both commons and both probably underplayed. (Cc @travisdwoo in hopes of combo draft videos.)

- Henke interviews Jan van der Vegt and gets a clear and concise rundown of drafting strategy from someone who's clearly very good at that.

- Karsten makes a diagram of the top 8 draft to present something visually that I used to awkwardly try and figure out from Draft Viewer. I expect this kind of chart to become a regular feature of draft coverage.

Karsten and Henke should get loads of credit for doing a better job at GP text coverage than everyone else out there.

EDIT: This is also the first GP coverage to name a split card without creating a broken link.

Standard: Online Scoreboard for June 3-8

Counting the 4-0's in DEs and everything that managed 6 wins in a PE this week, here's a scoreboard for the successes of standard decks in posted tournaments on Magic Online since June 3.

deck	#	players
UWR	10	ryan ward, andreas94, gnorilgrande, krom321, syrup16g, pegleg, steb, 3tzis, alfredo torres, normajean
BWG Reanimator	10	wizard pt, disgust, lfceline, leozito, fsumagic, zenith777, cwllc, l1x0, totertipper, bornman
Domri Naya	9	entril, olivetti, hoey07, hoey07, gallows, phresh87, junglefever85, laduree, xovah
BWG Aristocrats	7	cursedwave, akerlund, leetroxordude, quack quack, rastaf, kmaster, kumazemi
Saito Rg	6	aspankxx, norrin rad, devil, isaiascantub, chantsu, pponomarew
Jund	5	skittrix, keraan, stolpage, randomdrooler, protossx
BWR Aristocrats	4	gall, gall, kazuyamishima, enzoreal
Bant Auras	4	nerney9, valada, disil, dps330, nerney9
GW Big Tokens	2	deel, darkestmage
GW Auras	2	agnara, agnara
UW Control	2	huggins, tefaru
Elf Ramp	2	nielsen333, parasprite
GB Control	1	tetar
Grixis Control	1	purpler
Cloudfin RUG	1	giddens
Esper Control	1	stikfas
Naya Blitz	1	theagent002
4c Reanimator	1	thekid
Bant Control	1	shipitholla
Farseek Naya	1	wargoat
Gruul	1	thomash
Gruul Blitz	1	thommo
Naya Humans	1	tenele

If we count Aristocrats with green and Aristocrats with red as two versions of the same deck, then we have a "big four" decks (Aristocrats, UWR, BWG Reanimator, and Domri Naya) holding 40 of the 74 successes on our scoreboard, with the rest of the spots going to Jund, Auras, "minor" decks, and different versions of Naya beatdown.

- Multiple appearances: Agnara with GW Auras, Hoey07 with Domri Naya, and Gall with BWR Aristocrats.
- Tournament victories: Laduree with Domri Naya and tenele with Naya Humans (feat. 20 land and 4 Boros Elite).

The IRL standard result this weekend is Casey Hanford winning an SCG Open with an Aristocrats that had 2 Obzedat, beating a Naya Blitz deck with 3 Madcap Skills in the final. The top 8 included a normal UWR with 2 Geist of Saint Traft, a dedicated UWR Geist deck with some Thundermaw Hellkites and Ral Zareks, and a Naya Humans deck with 2 Kessig Malcontents and 2 Cloudshift.

Finance: Early June Winners and Losers

Using the awesome MtgGoldfish standard indices, this week's winners and losers:

- 5 of the top 7 winners are cards in the GWB Aristocrats deck.
- 5 of the top 6 winners are Innistrad block cards (rotating from standard in September).

Voice of Resurgence at $50 makes enough sense; it's third-set mythic that goes into a whole bunch of standard and modern decks. The fact that it is still peaking online about 5 weeks after the prerelease (and 2 weeks after it won the PT) tells me, as a speculator, that it's OK to buy in on blue-chip cards even a bit after they spike -- more buyers always show up; players will keep buying the new decks for some weeks after they first appear.

- 9 of the 10 losers cost 4 or more mana to cast
- 6 of the 10 losers are Innistrad block cards that will rotate.

It makes some sense that Sphinx's Revelation dropped, since standard has shifted away from being a Revelation-based format, but it's a surprise to see Advent of the Wurm drop this week. That card keeps showing up in new decks and wasn't really overplayed before in standard.

For the giant drop it took in these charts, Bonfire of the Damned (20.12) is still worth more than Domri Rade (14.86) when we look at the listings. Bonfire is an Innistrad block card that is not played outside of standard and has been replaced by Mizzium Mortars in most decks. Domri Rade is a 4-of in the likely best deck in standard. I expect to see Bonfire of the Damned under "top losers" again for the next few weeks.

Momir: Should you play 9-drops?

9-drops are sometimes worth making in Momir Basic.

Using the Gatherer lists of all the 8-drops or bigger you could make, plus my own arbitrary evaluations in this doc, 9-drops are a bit more likely than 8-drops to steal games, but they're also a bit more likely to do nothing.

In most Momir scenarios, if you get to 9 mana somehow, you'll want a big flyer (or a big haste creature or such) to drop on the board and attack / block with -- that means you should make an 8. A lot of 9's have disappointingly low power and toughness.

If the board is stalled out or it looks like the game will go long for some reason, 9's have about the same average value as 8's, since now you can grind incremental advantage from the blue, red, or green Bringer.

Bernhard Zander points out that Denizen of the Deep and Akron Legionnaire are 8's which almost automatically lose you the game. He thinks that this makes 9's slightly better overall, and he calculates the chance of hitting a suicide creature at 1% or 2%. A good rule would be to play 9's if you're winning and 8's if you're losing or if the game is close. (If you are certain to win, he recommends just making a 6.)

(Of course, you should never miss making a drop just to get to 9 mana -- the optimal plan is still maxing out at 8 by starting on turn 2 or 3. The choice of 9-or-8 should only come up after you get a random creature that generates extra mana.)

It also turns out you shouldn't play 10-drops in Momir Basic:

By my count, of the 14 possible creatures you could get for ten mana, only 3 are awesome (Jin-Gitaxias, Kozilek, and Progenitus) while most are either ineffective or have big upkeep costs. Better to just make an 8 or 9 and leave up some mana.

The 11- and 12-drops are pretty good though:

None of the 11's or 12's has haste or an enters-the-battlefield bonus, so you can activate Momir for 11 or 12 after combat without losing value.

There are no 13s or 14s. If you pay 13 or 14 to a Momir avatar, you will get nothing. If you pay 15, you'll get either an Emrakul or a 9/14 trample creature. There's no reason to pay more than 15.