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Editor: Michael Mason. Wednesday 21 April 2004.
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What to do? (Part II)
So now anyone who was interested has had a look through the first article and perhaps had a cursory thought as to how the decks should be put together. I'm writing this before the original has been posted, so I can't respond to any of the comments that I assume will have been made by the time you are reading this. (This is kind of weird)
In any case, when we opened the cards we thought that there were definitely some standouts in the pool. It was pretty good overall, without having that "bombiness" that you just love to see. When we found out that we were getting our cards back, it didn't seem like a horrible situation, but could have been better.
A cursory glance through the cards noted a few bombs - Oblivion Stone and Pulse of the Fields are both fantastic cards, with the Pulse bordering on quite insane. We also had Lodestone Myr, Luminous Angel, and Heartseeker. These are perhaps not bomb-level cards, but they are definitely worth a mention. We had a reasonable amount of affinity available with a Frogmite, a Myr Enforcer, a Somber Hoverguard, and two Quicksilver Behemoths. We also had a Nuisance Engine for support. There were only two Nims though, in the Devourer and the Shrieker, so the U/B combination, while more typical, didn't seem strictly necessary.
Out of all the cards we only had 2 mana accelerators in Iron Myr and Talisman of Indulgence - not even a Vedalken Engineer. This appeared to be problematic, as not having any Myr/Talismans in your deck, especially in a format that should be a bit faster than your average booster draft, could be very detrimental. The way that booster/tournament packs are arranged in Mirrodin and all sets in general is that Wizards puts a run of what are considered "good" cards followed by a run of "bad" cards. You may be familiar with the 'Myr Enforcer, Electrostatic Bolt, Bonesplitter' run - this is an example of a good run. Then you have cards like Dross Scorpion, which make it into the bad run. What always happens is that some hidden gems end up in the bad runs in each block - these are cards that Wizards probably didn't realise would be fantastic when they were doing R&D. In Mirrodin we have a few cards in the bad run that are really quite good - Nim Lasher, Viridian Longbow, Artifact Lands, and in this instance - the Myr. So what is my point? Only that if you are lucky enough to get some Myr in your Tournament packs, you have not sacrificed other good cards to get them - you will still be getting the chances at the Shatters and Bonesplitters. We didn't get a lot of hidden gems in our bad runs (a few artifact lands and a Viridian Longbow). It may seem pretty unimportant, but you would be surprised.
The other issue we had was a decided lack of 2 and 3 casting cost creatures. There were plenty of 4 mana-and-up men, and 2 of each of the black, green and red golems (why couldn't it be white or blue!), but the lower end was decidedly lacking. We could also tell right away that we were going to end up running some fairly average guys in some of the decks.
Equipment. This we had in spades. 14 of them to be exact. So much so that we ended up having to leave a number of playable ones in the board. The 2 Bola's were a must, as was the Longbow and Bonesplitter. We also ended up using the Banshee's Blade and the Heartseeker - and the 2 Specter's Shrouds, so we were fairly equipment heavy.
Card drawing/economy. Nil. No Thoughtcast, Thirst for Knowledge, Mask of Memory, Serum Tank - nothing.
We went through the cards and divided them into what are the more typical decktypes for this format. Namely Green/Red, Blue/Black and White/Red. We definitely had enough red to split between two decks, so that wasn't an issue. The Green/Red deck looked pretty good at this stage, with a reasonable amount of green fat. However in this build the curve started at about 3-4, and with only potentially 2 mana accelerators, this was not a good proposition. Then we made the Blue/Black affinity deck. With this build we had 2 off colour artifact lands, which were fine, and a reasonable amount of artifacts. You could likely get a turn 4/5 Behemoth, which isn't too bad. But overall the deck wasn't that fast. We could run an off colour spellbomb, Chromatic Sphere and Scrabbling Claws to speed up the affinity aspect a bit, but there weren't all that many good finishing cards. That left the White/Red deck. We had fantastic equipment, but unfortunately only one Skyhunter Cub to take advantage of it. In fact we had four or five really good white cards and that was essentially it. This was really more of a Red/White build as we had 2 Oxidda Golems and 2 Arcbound Hybrids to speed the deck up a bit.
So after all this we still had a few cards floating that didn't have a deck - Heartseeker and Oblivion Stone. We had 3 fairly decent decks, but none of them really had that something special to give us any confidence. The green deck was slow, even if we gave it the Myr/Talisman. The White/Red deck was clunky - there was a lot of opportunity to get bogged down early with cards like Rustmouth Ogre, Loxodon Mystic and Luminous Angel. The Blue/Black deck looked pretty reasonable, with some beaters in the Behemoths, but the only real removal was a single Irradiate - and the Stone wasn't great in this deck given the affinity aspect.
We quickly decided that this perhaps wasn't the best combination of colours. The Green deck had holes at the lower end, so we shifted the Blue to that deck in lieu of the red to try to speed it up. This instantly looked pretty good. We put the Greaves here and a Bola. 2 of the 3 artifact lands were now on colour. The Nuisance Engine had some synergy with a few things in the deck like the Behemoths and the Echoing Courage. The Lightning Greaves, which would have been in the Green deck anyway, would end up being fantastic with the Behemoths and with helping out affinity in general. Also, this build meant that we didn't have to use a lot of the typical green cards like Tangle Spider, the various Tel-Jilads, etc, and could focus on the good green stuff like One Dozen Eyes, Predator's Strike, Echoing Courage and the Creeping Mold. This deck looked quite reasonable at this stage.
This left the White/Red deck and what was now a Black/Red deck. This deck looked slightly better than the affinity build. There was a bit more removal, which would be required for the average-level creatures to get damage in. All in all a serviceable deck. So at this stage we thought we had a winner in the U/G deck and we had 2 other decks that may or may not win. This really wasn't the kind of situation we wanted to be in, as it left a lot up to randomness. The time was nearing the end when we had a thought - mono red. We piled the cards out and the mono-red deck was fantastic. Guaranteed turn 3 Oxidda Golems! 5 Haste creatures. 10 Removal spells counting the Spikeshot. A Fireball to finish things off when the mediocre-yet-fast creatures got their early beats in. In this deck the Arcbound Hybrids went from being an average creature to being very good. Arcbound Worker and Arcbound Slith were in a similar category. Even the often maligned Alpha Myr had a good place in this deck. And there was one other very important thing - not only did this deck not need mana Myrs - it didn't even want them. With a mono colour deck we could afford to play fewer land than normal and the deck as a whole only had 5 spells that cost more than 3 mana. In this deck the Rustmouth Ogre was quite a beater as there were so many removal tricks available. This deck could also play a haste creature for free on turn 6, and still be able to entwine one of the 3 Barbed Lightnings on the same turn. In this deck the Duskworker was also good - because all you did was bash, bash, bash. This was a deck that we could reliably count on every round.
So that left the very unpopular Black/White colour combination. Realistically this deck wasn't going to win a lot of matches. It was clunky and very slow. It ran Pewter Golem and Luminous Angel and wouldn't mulligan well. There was a recent article on StarCity, which talked about certain bad cards being good in a bad deck. This was basically that situation. However this deck did have a plan, and a fairly reasonable one. Stall. Stall out the game until you win with one of the random bombs. Stay alive with Blinding Beam and Oblivion Stone and Pulse of the Fields until you can get an active Heartseeker or Luminous Angel. Tap things down with the Leonin Bola and the Loxodon Mystic. If this deck survived until turn 10, it had a reasonable shot at it. There was very little efficient removal in this deck, and there would be many things that it couldn't deal with, but with the mono red and U/G decks looking quite good, it didn't, in theory, need to win all that much.
We finished building the decks with only a few minutes to spare - and this with a full hour of deck construction. This is definitely the most challenging team-sealed format that I have taken part in. Minga Wong was in Seat B and took the Blue/Green deck. While this was the second best deck it was also green, and none of us were too keen on playing green. Egidio DeGois in Seat C, took the mono red deck, and was told that he better not lose. He laughed. We were serious. This left me the Black/White amalgamation. Our deck lists were as follows:
So what did we leave out? A fair bit. We couldn't find a place for Thunderstaff. I love this card, and it would have been good in the White/Black deck, but there didn't seem to be anything left to cut. We probably should have also played the Darksteel Pendant in the White/Black deck to help search out the bombs when needed. There were a number of games where if I had drawn one of the bombs I would have been able to recover from an extremely bad situation. We didn't play a lot of the slower equipment like Scythe of the Wretched, Vulshok Gauntlets and Vulshok Battlegear - again it just didn't fit anywhere.
And now to the rounds. Our first round pairing was Canberra's Team Square - which includes Anatoli Lightfoot, Tristan Gall, and another guy in Seat C who I know by face but can't remember by name (sorry). This would be considered one of the better Canberran teams, so we definitely weren't getting any first round reprieves.
We started playing and my opponent (Tristan) opened with a Turn 2 Vedalken Engineer. This was very bad news for my slow deck. But his pressure didn't continue and I was able to get an active Heartseeker to clean things up. Before we had finished the first game Egidio announced that he had won his match (Burn!), which took a lot of pressure off us and had the added effect of putting more pressure on them. This seemed to be a recurring theme throughout the day.
In my game, another second turn Engineer spelled trouble this time and a third game was required. I was victorious here which meant Minga's game was a moot point. This was a good thing as he was facing a dreaded Leonin Shikari - Leonin Bola combination, which he couldn't deal with.
After Round 1: Team 1-0, Player A 1-0, Player B 0-1, Player C 1-0
Round two saw us paired up with Andrew Vance's team. I was unfamiliar with the other two members, though I've seen them before - my opponent was John Paul. It was in this match that Pulse of the Fields really proved to be a magnificent card (if you didn't know already!) as it kept me in the game for a very long time until I could stabilise with a few of my bombs. There was a very interesting scenario in Game 3 as I had a Luminous Angel token with a Heartseeker attached and he had a Quicksilver Elemental and a Crystal Shard in play. Have a think on this one a bit. I ended up winning this one after a time, which again didn't matter as both Minga and Egidio had won their matches.
After Round 2: Team 2-0, Player A 2-0, Player B 1-1, Player C 2-0
In Round 3 we were paired up against Tom Stoddart's team. I'm not sure if it is actually HIS team but he was the person I knew and played. I got totally decimated in this match. Tom had Crystal Shard, Skullclamp and Mindslaver - none of which I could deal with and all of which wrecked me. Even the Pulse couldn't save me in this match. Luckily Minga and Egidio won their matches so my horrible defeat didn't hurt as much.
After Round 3: Team 3-0, Player A 2-1, Player B 2-1, Player C 3-0
At this stage the decks were shaping up as we had thought - the mono-Red monstrosity was making quick work of every opponent. In Round 4 however we played another Canberra team featuring Dominic, Hugh Glanville, and Jeremy. Jeremy was in Seat C and we had seen a bit of his last game. His graveyard included Shatter, Electrostatic Bolt, Bonesplitter, Morningstar and Grab the Reins - at that time he had a Stir the Pride in hand. Egidio was a bit nervous. It didn't seem to matter though as Egidio again called out that he won his match when we were in the middle of our game 1. I played Hugh, who had an equally mismatched deck in Black/Green. Game 1 was a bit of a ripping war with both of us pulling Pewter Golems off the top in succession. Unfortunately for me he then came up with a Troll Ascetic and I packed it in. Game 2 was quite uninteresting and I scooped without mana to watch Minga's game. Minga drew like a fiend against Dom's quite insane Memnarch deck and pulled it out.
After Round 4: Team 4-0, Player A 2-2, Player B 3-1, Player C 4-0
At this stage we were more or less guaranteed passage into the Top 4 - all we needed to do was draw one of our next two matches and we were in. We got paired up with Team Obviously (Tim He, Ben Seck and Alex Brown). Unfortunately they were 3-0-1 having drawn their first round. This meant that we couldn't I.D. and had to play it out. I played Tim, and was never really in either of the games. He had double Spikeshot Goblin and was using Leonin Battlemage to pump them up and destroy my team. I had the Pulse and was holding out for the Stone, but his Mask of Memory was netting him too many cards. He was also the only opponent I had all day that really knew how to play against the Pulse, so I lost. Egidio made quick work of Alex Brown, whose deck was reliant on multiple pumps of average creatures. Pretty solid but no match for the burn. In the Minga/Ben games Ben drew a couple of Echoing Decays which proved extremely useful on One Dozen Eyes' insect tokens. The second game saw a pair (I think) of Neurok Prodigies on his side, flying over for a quick win.
After Round 5: Team 4-1, Player A 2-3, Player B 3-2, Player C 5-0
At this stage all the teams we had played during the day were near the top of the field. What this meant is that we had to play a team that couldn't I.D. into the final four. We had our second deck check of the day and got underway. The results of this match were fairly irrelevant to us, as one 4-2 team would end up making it, and we would have had the highest resistance. That being said, we would still prefer not to lose. I had a horrible go at it, mulliganing 4 times in the three games I played - the last 2 in game 3 on the play. I went down pretty hard. Egidio actually lost a game 1 before pulling the match out again - Minga's games ended up going to time and we finished the round with a draw
After Round 6: Team 4-1-1, Player A 2-4, Player B 3-2-1, Player C 6-0
So we were in. Either second or third place after the rounds, along with Team Obviously, Team Square and the Hugh/Dom/Jeremy team who were the 4-2 that made it even though they lost the last round to Obviously. We were once again paired up with Team Square in the Semi Finals. Tristan commented that he was 1-5 on the day so far, only slightly worse than my 2-4. Again with the early Engineer. Bleh! Then something happened for the first time all day - Egidio lost! A Predator's Striked, Vulshok Morningstarred Tangle Golem proved to be too much. Minga managed to wreck Anatoli's mana with a Creeping Mold however and that left it up to me. At one stage Egidio came by to view the board - it was Tristan with Yotian Soldier, Hoverguard Observer, Drill Skimmer and Arcbound Stinger on 20 life, and me with Dross Golem and Heartseeker on 8 life. Tristan had a few cards in his hand and I had one. Egidio looked concerned until he saw that my one card was the Pulse. I got a Stone into play and eventually got to enough mana where I could pick off his creatures and Pulse every turn. Tristan had a Shatter for the Oblivion Stone but couldn't deal with either the Pulse or the Heartseeker so he extended the hand.
After Round 7: Team 5-1-1, Player A 3-4, Player B 4-2-1, Player C 6-1
The other Semi-Final wasn't over yet, with Alex and Jeremy in the final game of the deciding match. Dom's Memnarch killed Ben and Tim beat Hugh Glanville. I didn't watch all of the last game, but Jeremy was on 3 or so and Alex was on 17 when Jeremy entwined a Stir the Pride on his Bonesplitted Auriok Glaivemaster after Alex had used a Predator's Strike on his attacking Tel-Jilad Outrider to swing the game around - Jeremy gained 7 life to give him back some breathing room. Jeremy drew a Morningstar and Alex took a six-point hit. And another. His Pulse of the Tangle wasn't enough as Jeremy ripped a Fireball off the top for the win.
That left Dom's team as our opponent for the finals - we did a prize split, conceding a couple of packs for the slot - "just in case"
So our rather unconventional decks proved to be successful, and ended up going much the same as we expected/hoped. We had good matchups throughout the day and a bit of luck when needed - as you do. And dinner always tastes better when you have won.
Many thanks to Dave Low and his ever-fantastic Canberra tournaments, which included free food, drinks, chocolates and lucky dip rares. What more could you ask for? Other TO's would do well to take some pointers!
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