Saturday 29 June 2013

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 Rites10JFumerton79, Exokell, L1X0, YS, CharLy, 88trample, Enrico, MagicPlayerDudeBro, SethDrone, L1X0
Saito Rg9tayman227, vsk, hot milk, Azazel314, syrup16g, TheNoodle812, Devil, megafone, vsk
Jund7Boin, dailyllama, juppal, nitechill, bluedragon123, Chlywly1, ProtossX
UWR Resto7BigAnnie, Bluecry, Zorrrba, MituliakV, Cryptic, Cryptic, Mingpac
Naya Humans4ThomasH, the adult swim, frankkarsten, Diem4x
UWR Slow4Crossfire42, bratschnik, Born2Win, Carl
Big Naya3Blinky010, AKMiD, BytorAndTheSnowdog
Bant Control3trunks132, reiderrabbit, Trailerpark
BWr Aristocrats2i b TRUE, xLeitix
Naya Blitz2Silver Death, HaM 187
Junk Aristocrats2MagicLair, enzoreal
UWB Alchemy Rites2pelli, pelli
Bant Auras2Lister1991, RReigle82
Jund Creatures2Xeroo, battleofjace
Red1trog3r
4C Alchemy Rites1zhuhao
4C Faithless Rites1usokui3
GW Tokens1armel
Surgeon Generals1Scream
Jund Blitz1AmericanO
Farseek Naya1duparcqG
GB Mutilate1Ofelia
Prime Speaker Bant1XxForgexX
BWr Human Aristocrats1ar7ic
4C Human Aristocrats1Vicalis
URw Nivix Cyclops1le 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.

Thursday 27 June 2013

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.

Wednesday 26 June 2013

Standard: Flinthoof Humans


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.


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.

Tuesday 25 June 2013

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).



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.)

Monday 24 June 2013

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
2B Deepcavern Imp
6B Absorb Vis

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!

Friday 14 June 2013

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.

Thursday 13 June 2013

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.


Monday 10 June 2013

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.

Sunday 9 June 2013

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
UWR10ryan ward, andreas94, gnorilgrande, krom321, syrup16g, pegleg, steb, 3tzis, alfredo torres, normajean
BWG Reanimator10wizard pt, disgust, lfceline, leozito, fsumagic, zenith777, cwllc, l1x0, totertipper, bornman
Domri Naya9entril, olivetti, hoey07, hoey07, gallows, phresh87, junglefever85, laduree, xovah
BWG Aristocrats7cursedwave, akerlund, leetroxordude, quack quack, rastaf, kmaster, kumazemi
Saito Rg6aspankxx, norrin rad, devil, isaiascantub, chantsu, pponomarew
Jund5skittrix, keraan, stolpage, randomdrooler, protossx
BWR Aristocrats4gall, gall, kazuyamishima, enzoreal
Bant Auras4nerney9, valada, disil, dps330, nerney9
GW Big Tokens2deel, darkestmage
GW Auras2agnara, agnara
UW Control2huggins, tefaru
Elf Ramp2nielsen333, parasprite
GB Control1tetar
Grixis Control1purpler
Cloudfin RUG1giddens
Esper Control1stikfas
Naya Blitz1theagent002
4c Reanimator1thekid
Bant Control1shipitholla
Farseek Naya1wargoat
Gruul1thomash
Gruul Blitz1thommo
Naya Humans1tenele

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.

Friday 7 June 2013

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.


Thursday 6 June 2013

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.

Standard: WGb Virtue Tokens

Michael Jacob's stream tonight involved a 4-0 with a WGb tokens deck that wasn't Aristocrats -- it was an Intangible Virtue deck with copies of Midnight Haunting and Collective Blessing main. Deel 4-0ed with a similar list yesterday:


This version breaks down to:
- 24 land + 4 Pilgrim
- 20 token-makers + 3 Voice of Resurgence
- 2 Putrefy
- 7 Anthem effects

I forgot to take a screenshot of Jacob's version, but I assume it cut some of the "weird cards" for the 4th Voice of Resurgence, 4th Call of the Conclave, and 2nd Gavony Township -- if Aristocrats can run 2 Gavony Township, then certainly this deck can.

Other 4-0 decks from this same event include Agnara's GW Ethereal Armor deck (no Hexproof), huggins' UW control with 2 Runechanter's Pike main, and nielsen333's GW Elf-Ramp deck with 4 Elvish Archdruid and 4 Soul of the Harvest.

Standard: Jund is the slowest

Some opening hands
From M3G1 of Michael Hetrick's Jund videos -- an opening hand on the play:


t1 nothing
t2 nothing
t3 Putrefy
t4 possibly nothing

Hetrick:
"Even if we draw a red source quickly enough, this hand doesn't do anything, still, for quite a while. The best that we could draw would be Farseek, obviously, but we'd still need to draw the correct card after that. This being an unknown matchup, I'm gonna have to mulligan. This hand just wouldn't be very good against aggro."

Here's the six we find:



t1 nothing
t2 Ground Seal
t3 probably a Keyrune
t4 probably a Huntmaster

Hetrick:
"Alright. Sure."

The second hand casts some spells by turn three, but against aggro, it wouldn't offer any resistance until the turn-four Huntmaster.

Though they're both better than a mull to five, neither of these hands is very likely to win against aggro.

Does Jund not run early drops?
Not really.

For three mana or less, a normal Jund deck has something like 8-10 removal, 4 Farseek, 2 Keyrune, and 2 Ground Seal, plus possibly maindeck Lilianas. This represents 16-20 of the 35 or so spell slots in the deck -- but only the removal and the Lilanas will affect the board.

Discounting the "set-up" cards (mana acceleration and cycling Ground Seals), we can expect about 10 spells from a Jund deck that will affect the board for three mana or less. A lot of aggro decks run 30+ spells that affect the board for three mana or less.

Does Jund need early drops?
Maybe not.

Jund is capable of fighting aggro with stuff like t3 Huntmaster or t4 Thragtusk. On the play, the Farseek plan can actually work against Champions of the Parish and Flinthoof Boars.

But probably yes.

Jund decks have a ton of Pillar of Flame, Tragic Slip, Vampire Nighthawk, and other cheap anti-aggro spells in the sideboard. The transformative aspect of this implies that the optimal plan for beating fast creatures is the opposite plan from how the deck is built. We could say that Jund decks are pre-boarded for Reanimator and other big-spell matchups.

Owen Turtenwald's Jund article this week mentioned that Farseek is the best card in the deck and basically showed that no hand with Farseek should ever be mulliganed. Turtenwald plays Keyrunes to supplement Farseek; traditionally, turn three mana acceleration in constructed is a sign of a slow format. The giant importance of a Rampant Growth that doesn't even block should illustrate how slow the Jund deck is.

How can such a slow deck be good?
It is good when the other decks are slow.

As far as I know, Jund does poorly in aggro matchups and really well in matchups where it can win with Rakdos' Return and Sire of Insanity. This means that it's a good deck in top 8s and day 2s, but it mostly loses in online daily events, where grinders play 19-land mono-red decks (for budget reasons and clock reasons).

Do the blue decks have early drops?
Yes -- they have Augur of Bolas and Azorius Charm.

The UWR decks floating around Magic Online these days are all big spell decks, with counterspells, Planeswalkers, and Sphinx's Revelations. A typical blue deck doesn't use many slots for pure removal (burn spells or Detention Sphere), but Augur of Bolas and Azorius Charm mean UW can play 8 two-drops that both draw cards and slow an aggro rush.

Monday 3 June 2013

Standard: UWR vs BWG Aristocrats

From Guillaume Matignon's stream, here's a BWG Aristocrats deck curving out on the play and still having zero chance of winning:


Pretty brutal. Matignon seemed not to know his opponent's deck, but his commenters gave a pretty clear explanation:


Pas le bon! A mieux deck against aggro (as seen in Brad Nelson's wins against Zombies and Naya Aggro) but much less bien against Rea -- and apparently against blue decks.

Matignon kills a Skirsdag High Priest with the Staticaster / Restoration Angel combo, and the opponent scoops early.

Another note: Matignon's version of the deck, intriguingly titled "UWR Wafo," plays 2 Rewind, 2 Restoration Angel, and a handful of other creatures.

UPDATE: From R3 of the same tournament, here's how Junk Aristocrats can beat UWR -- double Voice of Resurgence:


Matignon lost this match. Renounce the Guilds did a lot of work for him, but Turn // Burn seemed weak against armies of tokens.

Standard: Weekend standard scoreboard

Using the top 8 from Baltimore SCG Open, the top 4 decks from this weekend's online premier events, and the 4-0 decks from this weekend's posted dailies, here are some new standings from the horse-race for best deck in standard:


- The UWR deck has a core of Snapcaster, Revelation, Think Twice, Dissipate, Azorius Charm, and a lot of burn spells, judging by its MtgGoldfish profile. Both the Goldfish aggregate list and VFS's PE-winning list only use 2 Supreme Verdict. A lot of players have cut Restoration Angel and play a nearly creatureless version.

- The Rg decks here are all from DEs.

- The Naya Aggro finishes are all from the SCG top 8 and all follow Aaron Barich's 0 Burning-Tree Emissary model.

- akiaya's 4th-place BRW Control deck is a bit of a surprise. Highlights include 2 Nearheath Pilgrim and 2 Underworld Connections main.

- TinMan354 made a PE finals with a version of 4c Reanimator that used 2 Rolling Temblor and 2 Pillar of Flame instead of the usual Lingering Souls or Harvest Pyre.

- I called it control on the table, but pelli's Esper deck had the reanimator engine of 4 Forbidden Alchemy and 3 Unburial Rites to put Angels of Serenity into play.

- A lot of the decks marked "control" on this table are creature-based control decks. Those include mikev1919's GB deck (with 4 Desecration Demon, 4 Geralf's Messenger, and 3 Mutilate), MattsuN and aldevab's Loxodon Smiter Bant deckssmh's RUG deck (featuring 2 Izzet Staticaster and 3 Ral Zarek), and Jake Taft's BUG Control (with 3 Mutilate and 3 Warped Physique).

- A 4-0 deck that was closer to pure control was mikebrav's WB deck, featuring 3 Terminus and 3 Blind Obedience.