Frost titan is also good for locking down Valakut's few forests to keep them off of Primeval Titan mana/summoning trap. I've found that Inquisition works really well against Valakut and i imagine it would work well against a diverse meta.
Wurmcoil engine is also a beating against Valakut and most aggro decks if you can get to six mana. I've got a WNM for constructed happening and i'll post my results then.
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Found myself agreeing with most of this post about Cavern of souls and countermagic.
Tips:
- Most control players already know this but when mulliganing hands against players that play Jace Beleren and they are going first you might want to mulligan a hand without a 2 mana counter. Because if they tapout for Jace Belerenon turn 3 and you don't counter that gives the opponent info on your hand with no 2 mana counters. There is probably a way to use this to your advantage in some situations, but not many.
- Some UW lists will bring in Leyline of Sanctity against the discard. Game 2 I brought in all my discard and ended up drawing 4 discard spells with a leyline in play from when the game started. I think an extra Into the Roil would be good in the SB for some situations.
Note: Online Alara is still STD and Scars is not out yet so the decks are not exact.
Never Smile when you get a chance can you explain sideboarding for the deck.
@Markwerf: The inquisitions are so flexible, they can remove fauna shamans, counterspells, removal, ramp etc without being dead cards game one like duress can. I plan to have duress SB while i'm running 4x Inquisitions main. Having 4 Darkslick shores are so useful in the deck for this.
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Found myself agreeing with most of this post about Cavern of souls and countermagic.
Hey guys, I'm new to the whole U/b thing but some questions:
My meta is about 33% control and control variants, 25% ramp, and 25% aggro, with the rest being rogue, so inquisition is out of the question over duress right?
It seems sweet, but I'm not sure if the meta is right for it. Pretty dead against Ramp. I guess it deals with Primeval Titan, but they still get two activations from it.
Against U/W it hits a Sea Gate Oracle, I guess. Can reduce the size of a titan, but still unexciting.
Shines against RDWs/WW builds, however. Really awesome early 2 for 1s are great against aggresive decks.
i like skinrender only with Mimic Vat because it's like a really bad version of Mutilate. strong against Elves though, since they might have Eldrazi Monument online by the time you get the combo set up, so you just remove the threats, and make them sac creatures too.
at this point, it's hard to say that he's worthy of the mainboard unless the meta calls for it.
Skinrender is amazing - the only problem it has is that creaturekill that doesn't immediately kill the creature is fairly unexciting in this standard, because you can take a titan out with make smaller+block but it'll get two activations from it.
I'm trying to cram Argent Sphinx into the Draw Go version. ... It's impossible I think. Egh. [I was taking out the JTMS's and Preordains and adding Prophetic Prism/Crystal Ball. ... YEAH. :P. ... Oh well, will probably be fun at FNM? *edit* I changed it into mono-U and it seems to be doing better, so that's ... a thing. But eh. Worse than this deck.]
my mouth is full of winsome lies -
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Okay, now that we have a new thread for B/U Control I am going to repost the deck the main is simmilar to before but I removed unsummons from the sideboard as, while I still think that the deck is crazy, I think that Eldrazi/Valakult are more dangerous.
I am wondering if people who are playing UB have been running into decks that sideboard Leyline of Sanctity. That card right there seems to really hurt your deck's ability of Hand Disruption, Consuming Vapors, Fatesealing, and Memoricide. I see Lists running two bounce spells, but do you find that too little or now??
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"Some call it a Habit, Cardboard Crack Addict
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
Yea, those are MTG Bars. What can I say, I am a dork
I'm surprised at the diversity in the Top 8 UBC decks. It seems as if there are two distinct archetypes developing. Personally, I'm surprised by the lack of Volition Reins. As a one of in any U control, it can wins games on its own.
Happy to see this archetype having some life to it, happier to see life in two forms.
2 Roils is often enough to get rid of threats like leyline and subjects it to being countered. roil cantrips, so it's not really a 2f1.
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~Intelligence is Bliss; Ignorance is Denial.
Skill is an ability that relates more so to the type of deck that's built and how said player pilots it. It also relates to the ability to assess the board and use the cards available to you in the most optimal way relative to each situation.
When a deck is filled with above par cards and every play is solid, there comes a diminishing need to "think" for the lack of wanting to use a better word.
It appears that people have a lot of questions about my build, how I use permission spells (I counter the crap out of ramp spells, by the way!), and how I sideboard. I am finishing up my tournament report, and then I will go ahead and simply write a guide to how I play the deck.
For now, people seem most curious about 2 things, so I will briefly answer those questions.
I determined my splash color to be black about one week before the event, due to Doom Blade being the best maindeck spot removal spell for the format. It may change if black decks grow in popularity, but the metagame was quite defined in favor of Doom Blade before the tournament. After choosing Doom Blade, I decided I wanted to have some kind of supplementary removal/disruption spell. I already was planning on running 3 Jaces and 2 Roils to have some bounce games in addition to the Doom Blades, but I really wanted 2-3 more slots of non-permission answers in the deck.
At that point in time, I was running 14 counterspells main instead of 3. My answer suite looked like the following:
Ratchet Bomb was not a bad card, and I actually have a pretty good deal of experience playing with Powder Keg from playing Eternal events. Actually, if it was Powder Keg, I probably would have kept it in the deck. Powder Keg kills manlands, and Ratchet Bomb does not. It doesn't matter that Ratchet Bomb can kill Planeswalkers in the context of a permission deck because you shouldn't be letting them resolve, unless that walker is Jace Beleren or you have the walker solved with board position/bounce as soon as it resolves. Ultimately, Ratchet Bomb was a weak answer to Beleren and cheap permanents, and to easy to play around.
I talked with my good friend Charly about the deck over the phone, and we both agreed that Inquisition was a better tool for disruption/removal to solve cheap threats which a Powder Keg/Explosives variant was designed to handle. It 'kills' a creature in the RDW player's hand early, or it takes a Burst Lightning before it gets kicked later. It gets rid of a Beleren or a Khalni Heart Expedition or a Cultivate. It's not a Mana Leak, but it often fills the same job in the early turns, and it also allows you to fit a tapland or Preordain into your game plan when you cast it on turn 2. I almost wanted 1-2 Smother in my maindeck anyways, and Inquisition did that job better because it was good against every single deck in the format. After all, if you look at your opponent's hand and he has nothing but 4+ costing spells, you should win the game with a permission deck...shouldn't you? Especially with the information you have just attained....
About sideboarding: you guys will just have to wait for the guide.
Against ramp decks, do you bother countering their ramp spells?
Depends on a few things.
-If its game one and hes ramping my mana leak may be dead soon so i pause and consider the following.
-Some dual/tri colour ramps can get land screwed so i liked to Mana Leak UGR-Froce builds if all i see is green lands sources. There is nothing more satisfying than a smug player chastising your Mana Leak on Cultivate and he ends up in a mana screw.
-Mana Leak is relevant for the frist Titan, usally so holding onto it is a good thing
- If he is going to get past Mana Leak after this ramp i do it, its a dead card, tap him down for your turn at least
So to sum up i mana leak a ramp if i)there is a good chance it slows colour fixing ii)if his ramp is going to take him to 6+ mana sources therefore leak is dead iii)i want to force him to tap down so he cant mess with my turn
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Given up magic because a)its a waste of money b)it sucks the joy out of life c)im doing more interesting things than tapping pieces of plastic that have no intrinsic value.
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
what are your guys thoughts on All is Dust? I originally figured the card to be a shoo-in for these builds. UB finally gets mass removal, or something. But none of the top 8 lists run it. I've had nothing but positive impressions using it locally (2nd place at fnm just last week). There wasn't a game where I wasn't happy to see it, if it resolves (big if) it's usually pretty advantageous against a lot of decks, especially if I have a wurmcoil engine out.
My build is somewhere between draw-go and the less counterspell heavy versions, with 7 maindeck counterspells, 3 doom blades, 2 into the roil. And 3 all is dust with eldrazi temple support!
If you're only going to run one creature why not make it Skithiryx in stead of Sphinx of Jwar Isle? I figure cutting their life in half and having a regenerating creature (with haste, potentially) seems good, no?
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I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
It is good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.
Hey guys, I'm new to the whole U/b thing but some questions:
My meta is about 33% control and control variants, 25% ramp, and 25% aggro, with the rest being rogue, so inquisition is out of the question over duress right?
How vital is jace 1.0? What about 2.0?
What bombs and little guys do I need to run?
Thanks.
If your choosing between Duress and Inquestion main DURESS! Duress hits every card black has problems dealing with. Enchtment/Artifact/PWer, Inqustion can be side against weenie aggro/control (but a lesser ration than duress) What 3 drop does any colour have that Doom Blade/Into the Roil cant answer before it kills you? Then think about what cards above 3 mana Doom Blade/Into the Roil cant deal with before it kills you. Duress maindecked everytime.
So there is a counter argument BUT it depends on the deck. If your playing permission heavy inqustion is good to stop early aggro so you can get counter magic open turn 2-3.Tthen your 12+ counters stop the +3cmc threats anyway. I still say Duress but letting you know thats the counter opinion.
Starting with U/B bombs.
-Grave Titan does 10/10 for 6 need justifcation/explanation on how to use? Not really. Lets continue.
-Frost Titan more useful than Grave Titan. A precison tool to the gravetitan sledgehammer. Tapdown big threats Wurmcoil/Titans. This is why it is useful, the pesudo shroud ability is nice do nothing. I've killed many of them with a 4CMC Doomblade. 4 Mana is a non issue past turn 6. White has 1-2 CMC removals so its same story as black (they will pay the cost anyway). Red cant deal with 6/6 anything easily, so counting on the "shroud" to work isn't going to work out.
-Sphinx of Jwar Isle, dont doubt the Sphinx. In permission builds where you tap out when you think its right to play he wont get killed by anything less than DoJ topdeck (besides sac effects).
-I say Abyssal Persectuor because I have had great success with it. Lots of people hate it, lots love it. B/U gives it ample removal. It survies TitanForce/Red Decks, huge body, evasion. I reccomend giving it a try.
-Jace 2.0 vs Jace 1.0? Obvious Jace 2.0 is more useful. Bounce stuff, fatesate, brainstorms. He isnt essential to any build like he is to Turboland but every state winning deck ran a minimum 3 of...
- I honestly think that these cards are the only worthwhile bombs. Now the bread and butter
-Doom Blade, rotation happens/meta changes and black has the best removal (as it should)
-Creeping Tar Pit, plansewalking killing madness. Has finished more games than i care to count.
-Duress Played mained or sided, very powerful. A fantastic card in the artifact set/PWer madness and against U/W control. Gives us a major advantage
-Into the Roil, unlike white we have no answers to many cards when they hit the board, this provides a pusdo solution and stops a PWer going off, run as a 2 off in almost every deck, it needs to be run as a two of in every deck
-Jaces Ingenutiy/Preordain/Sign in Blood/Jace 1.0, parts meet the engine
-Consume the Meek, useful vs aggro/manalands
-Consuming Vapors, works well with the card above, very good against Titans/Sphinx
- Mana Leak, run 4 or none
- Negate, help win the counter war/stop koth etc
- Trinket Mage, finds Volatic Key/Everflowing Chalice/Brittle Effigy/Chimeric Mass or Nihil Spellbomb
- Nihil Spellbomb, worth a second mention. Stops Bloodghast/Sun Titan/Vengvine/Phoneix and we are in the colours to tutor it.
Other useful things
-Gatekeeper of Malakir, kills then chumps, hits Frost Titan and Shroud. Sac effects are very overlooked. Consuming Vapors compleltly decimates Titans. Forst Titan cant dodge this baby
-Memorocide, fantastic sideboard, maybe 1 or 2 mained max
- Flashfreeze, troublesome ramp/red matchups
- Dispel, overlooked, win the counter war post SBD with ease, stop EOT things
Then some other okay options...cancel/skinrender/stoic rebuttle/smother/disfigure/inqusition of kozliek
You need to run these if you want to resemble a B/U control deck.
I always work around this basic control template anyway, just adjusted for the standard game. 26 Lands 2 Bombs/Wincon, Minimum Counter package, Minimum Draw Package, Minimum Removal
26 B, U, B/U Lands
3-4 of those CreepingTar Pit
2 Into the Roil (because we cant answer certain cards)
2 Doom Blade (Minimum)
4 Mana Leak
2 Spinx/Frost/Grave Titan/Wurmcoil (its a bomb)
2 Duress/Inqusition/Memoricde
4 Preordain or 2 Jaces Ingenuity
If you're only going to run one creature why not make it Skithiryx in stead of Sphinx of Jwar Isle? I figure cutting their life in half and having a regenerating creature (with haste, potentially) seems good, no?
Because if your running one creature they are banking removal making it more likely that it is going to die. Sphinx makes it all the more impossible to deal with.
what are your guys thoughts on All is Dust? I originally figured the card to be a shoo-in for these builds. UB finally gets mass removal, or something. But none of the top 8 lists run it. I've had nothing but positive impressions using it locally (2nd place at fnm just last week). There wasn't a game where I wasn't happy to see it, if it resolves (big if) it's usually pretty advantageous against a lot of decks, especially if I have a wurmcoil engine out.
My build is somewhere between draw-go and the less counterspell heavy versions, with 7 maindeck counterspells, 3 doom blades, 2 into the roil. And 3 all is dust with eldrazi temple support!
I hope your running no Titans/Creatures/Plansewalkers. Post your list then let us see. Works extremly well with artifact builds. I wont deny that, I run it in monoblue but i run only Trinket Mage as my coloured permanant.
Given up magic because a)its a waste of money b)it sucks the joy out of life c)im doing more interesting things than tapping pieces of plastic that have no intrinsic value.
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
Because if your running one creature they are banking removal making it more likely that it is going to die. Sphinx makes it all the more impossible to deal with.
Right, but most exile effects are gone now, and Skithiryx regenerates. The most popular forms of removal will not work against it, and it kills faster (not to mention is a better blocker, too.) So if you are only running 3 SoJI, why not run 3 Skithiryx instead? Both have one removal spell (2 after sideboard for Skithiryx) that work on them (assuming you have mana open for regeneration.)
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I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.
It is good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.
Right, but most exile effects are gone now, and Skithiryx regenerates. The most popular forms of removal will not work against it, and it kills faster (not to mention is a better blocker, too.) So if you are only running 3 SoJI, why not run 3 Skithiryx instead? Both have one removal spell (2 after sideboard for Skithiryx) that work on them (assuming you have mana open for regeneration.)
Condemn and Celestial Purge get rid of Skittles, but can't touch the Sphinx.
The nice thing about the Sphinx is he makes removal in the first game dead. I suppose you could side in Skittles in the second game, hoping they pulled the removal...
Rachet bomb is not a sweeper. And if you are using it to sweep, it's going to be sweeping tokens, why not use any Consume/Marsh. There are very few, if any enchantments right now that you would have to worry about.
As for Eldrazi Ramp/Valakut. It is indeed my worst matchup, and I very rarely win game 1. Trying to counter their ramp is futile, as your forestalling the inevitable. Since we are not aggro, do not expect to kill them before they start powering out Eldrazi. I've been running 3 Memoricide and 4 Sadistic Sacrament in the sideboard to deal with it. Since these two ramp decks usually run very few threats, it's easy enough to take them away. One Sadistic Sacrament against Eldrazi Ramp takes out all the titans, and a Memoricide gets rid of the Primeval Titans. I've decided to take out the Sadistic Sacraments for Mindbreak trap, to deal with the Eldrazi Titans that way, but I don't know if it's the right choice. I may switch back.
I like using spreading seas against valakut. Get there green mana early and valakut later.works like a charm
For people saying Duress is better in the main, Kozilek hits those early creatures that can lower your life total really fast. Which Duress cannot hit.
Which would you rather be able to hit against a B deck Vampire Hexmage, Nantuko shade or Mind SLudgewhich you could easily counter later on.
The only change I am wanting after some play with the deck is at least 1 more 1-2 cmc counter in the main.
For people saying Duress is better in the main, Kozilek hits those early creatures that can lower your life total really fast. Which Duress cannot hit.
Which would you rather be able to hit against a B deck Vampire Hexmage, Nantuko Husk or Mind SLudge which you could easily counter later on.
The only change I am wanting after some play with the deck is at least 1 more 1-2 cmc counter in the main.
This is exactly my thought process. IoK is better main deck because you can use it before you're able to have mana up to counter.
My name is Matt Bartmus, and I am the 2010 California State Champion. I don't have to pay for PTQs for a year because I countered a couple hundred spells and drew several hundred cards last weekend. With some help from my good friend Charly, I designed, tested, and tuned the following list myself:
I have been playing UW Control with a similar shell since the very last Standard PTQ in Las Vegas, and I barely missed top 8 there and at the 5k in Denver with the deck. After all of the ridiculous Shards creatures and multicolor spells rotated out of standard, Standard became a much simpler format with an extremely defined metagame. It was crystal clear that there were four major archetypes:
Primeval Titan ramp decks
Fauna Shaman/Vengevine creature decks
U/x Control decks
and Red Deck Wins
There are also a ton of random jank decks. White Weenie, Green Elves, G/B Poison, et cetera. All of those decks have their champion decks, but I tested the crap out of them and was confident that they were all essentially garbage. People like to build along a theme and defend their ideas way more than they like to be realistic and understand the fact that (metaphorically speaking) there won't be a new Sovereigns of Alara without Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary. For these random match-ups, I wanted about 4 spot removal spells, and decided upon a split between Smother and Disfigure. Disfigure is really good at providing insane tempo boosts, and it actually kills a great many creatures in the format, but I didn't want to play too many of them and draw dead. Therefore, I ran 2 Smothers as 'big disfigures.' I also wanted to run 2 Consume the Meek because that card is such a blow-out. Did you know? In the Eldrazi language, Consume the Meek literally translates to "Rape by Mothership!"
Ramp decks were divided into 3 sub-catagories: Valakut, Eldrazi, and others. The Valakut deck would be the worst match-up because its Primeval Titans literally will kill you and Valakut makes ramp spells much more dangerous than they typically are. Eldrazi Green is nearly as good, but if your manabase is stable enough to survive through Tectonic Edges and you have your own Edges to stop big Eldrazi spells, you should win. You just counter ramp spells and don't let your opponent draw extra cards, and the game is pretty simple. Any Titan deck without Valakut or Eldrazi temples was basically a bye, because it wasn't using Titan to find powerful lands. The only real complication to the ramp match-up is Summoning Trap, but that card dynamically changes the games by itself. I had to have a plan for that card, and ultimately I used Flashfreezes and Duresses out of the board to support the cheap counters and Mindbreak Traps in winning counter wars against Titan+Trap+Trap.
Control decks wouldn't be a problem because I was fairly certain I could win a control mirror by having a more solid build with the boat of Ingenuities, Preordains, and Tectonic Edges, as well as Jwar Isle as the ultimate threat in the mirror. I wanted a couple of slots dedicated to Control decks so I could take out a couple of removal spells for something more relevant, but otherwise I expected bringing in Duresses to be enough. After all, a properly built permission deck should be able to win against other control decks, so long as the deck doesn't stumble hard and the opponent doesn't stick an early Luminarch Ascension. For the mirror, I decided that I would board 2 Volition Reins because it was both a bomb and card advantage, as well as being another answer. However, in testing I understood the true power of Neo-Confiscate: it's card advantage. When you let someone have a Jace and then steal it, you're only up 3 for 2 cards. In order to get into positions where you're gaining from Volition Reins, you have to have at least 6 mana. I would rather just play a cheap draw spell so that I could avoid stumbling, and win out from bad positions as well as the good ones. Sign in Blood fit that bill to a tee. It's extra Preordains and almost Jace's Ingenuity, all at once. I was very happy when I figured out that little piece of technology.
I anticipated the ramp decks to knock most of the Fauna Shaman decks out of contention over the course of the first few rounds, so I ended up just dedicating 2 slots to Grave Titans and relying on some sideboarded removal to stall the Vengevine deck until I could just clog the board up and win with a stalemate. I didn't think I would play against more than 2-3 Fauna Shaman decks because they seemed poor for a metagame ruled by Primeval Titan. Vengevine is a big threat to a permission deck, but not much of a threat to a deck who is casting Aliens or blowing your face off with Volcanoes. So I let that match-up almost fall by the wayside and didn't go ape with a bunch of sideboard cards.
Finally, Red Deck Wins. I was planning on boarding some number of Smother and/or Disfigure from the beginning of the deck's inception, and counterspells rule against any of RDW's shenanigans (Koth, Devastating Summons, et cetera). If I could remove the first threat and play draw-go until playing a Sphinx, I would win pretty easily. As it turned out, I was winning well over 75% of my pre-sideboarded games against Red due to Preordain, Inquisition and Doom Blade being so darn powerful. I already had Flashfreezes and 4 spot removal spells in the board, so I didn't have to dedicate anything special to Red. I would lower my curve by trading Mindbreak Traps for Flashfreezes, and swap out Roils and Negates for Disfigures and Smothers.
The tournament turned out to be 8 rounds of swiss, with somewhere between 170 and 190 players. I was ready to crush some skulls.
Round 1-BU Midrange with Jace and Mana Leaks
I lost the die roll.
Nobody mulled in game one. My opponent opened with turn 1 Inquisition, taking a Mana Leak. Then he followed it up with a pair of Black Knights, a Jace which I countered, and a Bloodwitch. I was holding a pair of Doom Blades and no card advantage, so I died rather quickly to the beats.
In game 2, nobody mulled. I had Disfigures and Smothers in place of my Doom Blades, so when he played his cheap creatures I played even cheaper answers and drew cards while doing so. When I ran my opponent out of cards, I layed some beats. My opponent had fetched to 19, then he got hit by a Tar Pit to 16, and then took a pair of hits from a Sphinx and Tar Pit together while I held up Cancel mana.
In game 3, My opponent took a mulligan to 6 while I happily kept my opener of 7. I had the pleasure of seeing a board position where I had a Sphinx of Jwar Isle and my opponent had a Malakir Bloodwitch. The rest of the game felt exactly like being on the Sphinx side of that board position.
Round 2-UGR Turboland (Destructive Force?) with Green and Blue Titans
I lost the die roll again.
Nobody mulled in game one. My opponent opened with Raging Ravine. I understood that I would likely be playing against a Primeval Titan deck, and hopefully it was not the Valakut one. That version is the most dangerous of all the Titan decks because its Titans literally can (will?) kill you, whereas the other ones just try to draw a lot of cards, cast ridiculously-costed Aliens, and/or hurt your manabase with Tectonic Edges. In addition, Valakut itself is an engine that is designed to be fantastic against a permission deck, even one with 4 Wastelands. Fortunately for me, my opponent played an Island on turn 2 to follow his Raging Ravine. This meant I was going to be dealing with some kind of Turboland variant--the best of Titan match-ups for me. I remember my opponent sticking on 2 lands for a couple of turns, and then I countered an Explore to further keep him from drawing mana. I rolled a Jwar Isle out and quickly put him out of his misery, so we could play some real Magic. I think he told me that his hand was a greedy keep, but to his credit--I doubt it's that greedy to keep a 2-lander with all 3 of your colors in a deck with 27 lands, cantrips, and plenty of ramp spells.
In game 2, neither of us mulled. He opened with a free Leyline of Anticipation and a tapland. A couple of turns later, I Into the Roiled the Leyline (for simplicity's sake, but also to possibly bait a Mana Leak) and then countered it when it was recast. I then used Jace's Ingenuities to chain mass card advantage together while my opponent built his manabase and tried to find/resolve his own source of card advantage. He ended up resolving a second blue Leyline, but by that point in time I had the technology to counter a spell and cast an Ingenuity in the same turn, and then to have two hard counters open while I resolved a Jwar Isle. 4 swings later, and I was victorious.
Round 3-RG Valakut Titan
For the third time in a row, I lost a die roll. Apparantly my deck loved card advantage so much, it instinctively chose to draw first.
Nobody mulled. My opponent had a small handful of threats and enough mana to cast his spells, but I drew a lot of cards. At one point, I allowed a Primeval Titan to resolve so that I could resolve an Ingenuity instead, and my opponent hit me for 6 with Valakuts. However, that Ingenuity found me the second Tectonic Edge, which I used alongside Doom Blade to regulate the board position. To give you an idea of what threat my opponent tried to stick next: I managed to bounce the same Wurmcoil Engine roughly 6 times. This is no exaggeration. I was too busy casting Jace's Ingenuities, Wastelanding lands, and setting up taplands to care about a random 6-drop creature. I Roiled it once with kicker, unsummoned it 3 times with a Jace, and then unsummoned it again a couple of times while I finished casting the rest of my draw spells. I ultimately ended up countering it. After I drew a great many cards, I won the game by beating face with a pair of Creeping Tar Pits.
Neither of us mulliganed in game 2, but my opponent had a very rough time as I countered ramp spells, Duressed him for information, and arrived at a position where I could simply tap out for a turn 6 Jwar Isle without any serious repercussions. As my life pad reads: 20-15-10-5....
After one of the games, my opponent told me that he was casting Wurmcoil Engine repeatedly because it was the worst threat in his hand, and he wanted it to eat a counterspell so he would have a better chance of resolving one of the two Primeval Titans in his hand. He thought it might have been wrong, but I told him that I was holding 2 counterspells that entire time. This is the power of Jace's Ingenuity in a permission deck, and this is why I didn't lose a single game in which I resolved a Jace's Ingenuity. Your opponent has to choose between playing his best threat into counters and playing his worst threat so you can draw a bunch of cards and basically ignore it. He can't simply sit there and let you draw a lot of cards, but he can't actually resolve his good threats. And because of the nature of drawing cards, each Ingenuity draw you deeper towards another Ingenuity, which leads you into anything you want to draw (if it's actually in your deck). The same thing happened with Thirst for Knowledge and Fact or Fiction in their hey-days across multiple formats, including Vintage. Some people have this ill-founded logic that Jace's Ingenuity is too clunky to play in a control deck as a 4-of because they believe it's better to have more answers or relevant threats. In fact, Jace's Ingenuity is what stops you from running out of answers, and there really is no more relevant a threat than card advantage. How often do people actually win with a rook down in Chess, if their opponent isn't comboing off with a checkmate pattern? How often do people win games of Starcraft where their opponent has successfully expanded 2 times more than them without having a smaller army? All games revolve around resources, and Jace's Ingenuity finds you more resources on multiple levels.
Round 4-Red Deck Wins
I finally won a die roll! It was a good match-up for me to do so, although I doubt I needed to be on the play in order to win the first game.
My opponent and I kept our 7s in game one. I Preordained and set up shop while my opponent burned me and played 2-drops. I countered his threats one at a time, and then one turn he didn't follow up his attack with another threat...so I end of turn removed his only threat. I eventually found and resolved a Jwar Isle, and was at 9 life when he scooped.
After we each presented and cut each other's decks for the second game, my opponent took a while to debate the merits of keeping his opening hand. My hand included solid mana, 2 Disfigures, a counterspell, and a draw spell. While he was deliberating his mulligan decision, I prompted some dialogue:
"If your opener is double Goblin Guide on one land, I totally have this. For serious."
He smiled and glanced at my facial expression briefly before looking back down and continuing his gray hair-growing tough decision.
"Honestly. Usually I think keeping double Guide and one Mountain is the way to go against control, but if you do that I'm laying the hammer down."
He replied, and we had a few laughs. I got the impression that he didn't even have one Goblin Guide in his opener, although dual Disfigures were in their holsters, cocked and ready.
Ultimately he kept his 7 and played nothing on turn 1. I played a Tar Pit and passed. Then, on turn 2 he played his second land, tapped his two mountains, and played a Ratchet Bomb. I was honestly quite surprised to see it, although I was even more surprised when he played a second one on turn 3. I countered that one for simplicity's sake, and then a little while later I Inquisitioned him, put a Jace on the table, and drew some cards. When he got the Bomb to 4, I let my Jace die and then put another one on the table the following turn. I drew many, many cards that game and the only damage my opponent mustered up was 4 damage from an early Staggershock. I am accustomed to playing against red decks in games where I stabilize at under 5 life and cautiously play around all the possible topdecks for a dozen turns, so it wasn't that difficult to handle one game in which my opponent never stuck a threat and I permanently stayed at 16 life.
At one point in time during the second game, my opponent tried to Ricochet Trap my EoT Jace's Ingenuity. I explained to him that it didn't target, showed him the card as proof, and then thanked him for the free information. I believe it was slightly rude to say it in the way that I did, but I was quite carried away that my read on the 'unknown cards' in his hand were exactly as predicted. Plus, he was playing Sligh! I'm a cold-hearted Islands disciple, so I firmly believe there is a private hell for Red Deck Wins players.
Round 5-UR Destructive Force
I happily won the die roll for the second time in a row, especially at table one!
Neither of us mulliganed in game one. I drew all 4 Preordains while my opponent stuck on about 5 lands and drew 0 Preordains of his own. I remember pretty easily resolving a Jwar Isle with 2-3 counters backing it up, and ending the game before my opponent could start casting his big spells. He was discarding Pyroclasms and having a really tough time keeping up with his dead cards and not hitting his draw spells.
In game 2, we both almost simultaneously saw bad hands and shipped them back. I think the only land in that hand was a Tectonic Edge. Then, we both kept 6-card hands. I love it when players mulligan down evenly; playing with equally smaller hands makes for interesting games with limited resources! Any time in which there is a smaller number of cards in hand or both players have a low mana count, it reminds me of RTS games like Starcraft where the game is all about worker harassment and micromanaging unit control. In any case, this game it was my turn to stick on mana. I believe that I missed a land drop after hitting my third, and then a turn or two later I Preordained out of it and started finding more land drops. I knew from a discard spell that my opponent was sitting on Jaces, Ingenuity, and countermagic; he and I were on the same Draw-Go page. Both of us were simply rolling lands out and using Preordain/Ingenuity to sculpt hands and manabase for a long time. It was a very enjoyable game of chess with cards. While I had the edge of Duress effects for information, and I hit at least one more Ingenuity than my opponent, he had the advantage of a much more stable manabase. I was drawing a lot of Swamps and semi-dead Tectonic Edges, while he was sitting on tons of basic Islands and live Tectonic Edges.
We came to a turning point in the game when I finally drew a Mindbreak Trap. I Duressed my opponent, seeing Negate, two Big Jaces, and Volition Reins. I took one of his Jaces after some deliberation. A couple of turns later, I had two Jaces of my own in hand, and decided to initiate the counter-war. Our manabases were relatively equal in size, with him at the advantage in blue sources. I had 6 blue sources, 7 non-blue sources, and no land drop yet. My opponent had about 3-4 Mountains and the rest basic Islands, with a total of 13 lands. I tapped 2UU and played a Jace of my own. He didn't hesitate, and allowed it to resolve. I was a bit surprised, but understood that he wished to fight over the Volition Reins instead, which made sense with his far superior blue mana situation. I brainstormed and found another blue source, but it was a Darkslick Shores. I played it tapped, passed the turn, and awaited the inevitable reaction.
On his turn, he played his 14th land and cast a Volition Reins targetting my Jace. I Canceled it, with 4UU open. He tapped down to RUUUUU and Negated my Cancel. I responded by tapping down to 3U and casting Mana Leak on his Reins, cutting him off of mana. He payed the 3 and had UUU left over. I responded to the Negate again by casting an Into the Roil unkicked, targetting my own Jace. He had 3 Islands untapped and I had just a Swamp and Tectonic Edge untapped, so he cast the inevitable Mana Leak on my Into the Roil. Since that was his third spell of the turn (after Reins and Negate), I responded by casting Mindbreak Trap, targetting all of his spells and my own Into the Roil. I exiled everything on the stack but my Cancel, which fizzled and fell to the graveyard. And, because my own Roil was countered, I kept my Jace on the table. Shortly thereafter, I put a Sphinx on the table and put a literal end to the game.
After the counter-war, my opponent revealed that he had a Deprive still in his hand, but with only one mana left to cast it. Looking back at that critical fight, if he had used the Deprive on Leak instead of paying 3 mana, it would have looked like this:
He casts Volition Reins, leaving 8 open. I Cancel, 6UU open. He Negates, 6 open. I Leak, leaving 3U open. He Deprives, 4 open. I Roil, 1B open. He Leaks, 2 open. I Trap. He still has 2 open at that point, but no extra counterspell in hand. Now, let's say that he had an extra counter and I also still didn't have another Mindbreak Trap or another blue source...he gets the Jace, but is fully tapped-out. He can brainstorm, fateseal, or scry with a 3-counter Jace. On my turn, I resolve a Jwar Isle, play another Jace to kill his, and pass with 1UUU open and a Cancel up (around Tectonic Edge). Even if he wants to roll his other Jace out there, I don't care if it resolves...my Sphinx will simply kill it. If he plays a Destructive Force or Jace's Ingenuity, or a Sphinx of his own, I have Cancel at the ready. At that point in time, it is impossible for him to have more than one extra counterspell (from brainstorming with the stolen Jace), and it is highly unlikely he can recover at that point. So even if he did have that extra counterspell in the war, it was not looking good for him to take the game without some very immediate rips.
After the match, I was exhausted. There is more to a tournament than simply playing games of Magic. Equally important is keeping a cool frame of mind and objectively making the best decisions possible, based on reads and careful calculations. I had not made many mistakes so far during the day, only really messing up with open-ended Preordain situations. However, playing a difficult control deck for 5 rounds was nowhere near as exhausting as the fact that I had woken up at 10 AM the previous day, and road tripped for 5 hours in the wee small hours of the morning to arrive at Sacramento for the event. I have a history of sleeping issues due to multiple complicated sleep disorders, and am accustomed to being awake for 2 to 3 days on end or running on merely 2-3 hours of sleep each day, but it still was a challenge to keep my focus and composure after being awake for nearly 30 hours. I packed my stuff into my bag and went outside to the group's traveling machine to grab another energy drink and listen to some death metal. In the car, I told myself that there was only one more round to play, and then I could double-draw and take a couple of naps before the top 8. All I would have to do is focus on one round at a time, as Brad Nelson once said. I thought: I may not have slept, but while I have been awake I have played 30 games of Starcraft and more than that many games of Magic. I was 5-0 in matches and I had only dropped one game due to having Doom Blades maindeck against a black deck. I was ready to win some strategy games, whatever they were.
Round 6: Bureaucracy
As I stepped out of the car and strolled back to the building, I felt on top of the world. In the physical sense, I was far beyond tired, but I was playing the best Magic of my life and my brain was in peak condition. It was time to crush someone and draw into the top 8.
However, the pairings sheet told me that I was to play on table 11. That couldn't be right. I checked my record, and--sure enough, I was recorded as having 12 points. I immediately walked to the judges' station to fix the problem. En route, my previous round opponent found me and told me he was looking for me; that he was wondering why he was sitting on 15 points and told to play on table one, again. We both went to talk to the event staff together, and explained that we believed our match result was accidentally flipped in his favor. The head judge dug up our match slip and showed it to us. The first thing we were asked was whether it was our signatures on the sheet. The score (which was not in my handwriting) was marked 2-0 in my opponent's favor. We both told the head judge that our signatures were on the sheet, but the score should be reversed. The tournament organizer, who was standing next to him, told us that the result was permanent. According to him, regardless of the fact that my opponent was admitting defeat, they were unable to fix the problem. It was "too much work" for the TO and judges to either switch some tables around or re-pair the round. I told him that we understood how much of a pain this was for other people in the tournament, but it would only take 5-10 minutes and we were trying to correct the mistake as soon as we found out about it. I was curious about their stance on this situation, because I have been in at least 3 PTQs where a round this late in the tournament was repaired due to a clerical error. I also have participated in several PTQs where players have been individually told to go to other tables due to late-dropped opponents or no-shows in round 1 or some other circumstances. I knew that it was possible for the staff to make adjustments to rounds, and was curious as to why we were suddenly given an ironclad 'no' to correcting an obvious mistake. As the TO expressed, our "signatures were on the sheet, so the result [was] irreversible."
The head judge walked off to take care of some other business, and my round 5 opponent said that he was going to have to go play his round. I stayed to talk to the TO, because I wanted some information about the situation. I told him that I understood that his word was final for the event, but perhaps he could tell me how to contact one of his higher-ups. I wanted to know if I could speak with one of the people in charge of Tournament Organizers some time after the event, and if he could just give me any sort of name, email, phone number, website, or contact information, I would have been happy. Upon my request, he told me nothing. I told him that I wasn't going to hold anything against him for his call, but I just wanted to speak to someone who makes decisions about the way these situations are handled. After all, there is someone out there in the DCI who changed the way that certain rules violations are handled, and that happened last only months ago. If they can change the way that corrections are made, shifting game losses to warnings and vice versa, they can possibly change the way that tournament policy is written or interpreted. I'm no lawyer, but I'm educated enough in the modern world to understand the way that a bureaucratic system works.
The tournament organizer's response was worse than nothing; he gave me the run-around. He threw around words like 'bureaucracy' and 'committee,' patronizing me. I told him that I didn't even care that I was getting a loss at this point, but that it was important to me to find a way so that the next person in my shoes will not be treated in the same manner. After all, it was crystal clear that there was no collusion or ill intent involved. Maybe I made a mistake on the slip, but it should be reversible if the other party admitted the result was wrong. As I told the TO, "what motivation does he have for admitting defeat?" Nevertheless, the tournament organizer claimed ignorance to any sort of person or committee to whom I could contact about the way this rules policy works. Personally, I believe he was just covering his own end, but I truthfully didn't even care about naming him as someone who poorly handled the situation. I merely wanted to see that this set of circumstances is handled better, down the road. The conversation was over at that point, so I told the TO that I needed an extension for my next round, and then I went to table 11.
Round 6.5: BGR Mimic Vat Control
I sat down in front of an opponent who thought that he was about to be very lucky with his opponent receiving a game loss for being late, or possibly even winning a free round at 4-1 for a no-show. When I sat down, he was definitely bummed. I started telling the sob story, but then quickly stopped and decided to return my focus to playing the best technical Magic possible. To my opponent, I said "I may be a bit upset right now, but I will do my best to not take this out on you. I will try not to become emotional about this experience, but if I do, I apologize in advance." I shook his hand, wished him good luck, and we rolled some dice.
I won the dice roll, and my opponent had to ship his hand down to 6 while I kept my 7. My opponent opened with some Jund-colored dual lands and a turn 2 Vampire Hexmage, which resolved while I was playing taplands and Preordains. But, on turn 4, I felt really safe, so I simply rolled a Jace out there and brainstormed. He swung in for 2, then killed the Jace with his Hexmage to slow the card advantage down. Still, due to the fact that he was playing a Mimic Vat deck against a nearly creature-less deck, and due to the fact that I had twice as many answers as he had threats, the game was never really off the ground.
In game 2, neither of us mulliganed. I remember the game taking a very short amount of time, as my opponent never stuck a threat, and after I got up to a high land count, I quickly beat him down with a pair of Tar Pits.
I had a 7 minute extension for a round that took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to complete, and was done with the match halfway through the round with a permission deck. A lot of people claim that control decks, especially draw-go ones, take a long time to win matches. I have news for those players: I had at least 10 or 15 minutes to spare after every single match, up until this point. I never went to time the entire tournament, either. If you are too slow of a player to finish your rounds on time, you can change that fact. And if you are not a slow player, you shouldn't have a problem completing rounds with any deck that has even just one win condition. Rarely should matches ever, ever go to time, although it is definitely possible.
In any case, I went outside and found my friend Nick, who wasn't playing that day. I told him about the stain on my perfect match record, and requested that he had some kind of meal for me before the next round. You can use your imagine as to what I said specifically, but I elaborated that if he didn't bring me some food, a certain someone would probably be left in Sacramento that night. It was good to lighten the situation up with humor, but also important that he got the message: if someone didn't bring me food, I was going to lose it. A few times in the past, friends of mine have forgotten me or someone else when going on a food run at a big Magic tournament, and I'm sure any veteran grinder has been in that position as well. Dinner is not an option! I would have driven myself to grab some food, but not after being awake for over 30 hours....
Round 7: UW Control
I was back up to table 2 and there was a sizable crowd watching our match, from the very beginning. I lost the dice roll, and nobody mulliganed. I had a rough start with a draw that stuck on 3 lands for a turn, then I had to Preordain and play a tapland. My opponent simply played a turn 5 Jace Beleren with Negate back-up for my counterspell, and +2ed it to play around an on-board Creeping Tar Pit. The Jace stuck on the table for at least 5 or 6 turns, and during the entire time I never had an opportunity to connect into it with a Tar Pit, so instead I casted some Ingenuities and Preordains, plotting my escape from the soft lock. My first Ingenuity was Leaked while I was on 5 lands, but the next one stuck and brought home the bacon. I managed to Inquisition my opponent, grab his Cancel, and Roil his Beleren. My opponent had been Spreading and Edging my Tar Pits, but he didn't have the countermagic muscle anymore to stop me from rolling a Mind Sculpter on the table and brainstorming, then letting it legend rule his Beleren as he resolved that. From there, I was in complete control of the game state with removal, counterspells, and backup counterspells.
However, the game was far from over. In fact, we were simply moving on to another act. We both drew lands for about 10 turns, I couldn't find another threat besides Tar Pits, and my opponent had so much land removal that I couldn't possibly count on one of those to end the game. I needed either another Mind Sculptor or my second Sphinx. I had used the first Sphinx as a leverage tool to elevate myself from the Beleren lock in the early game, and I used that first Jace to effectively act as "Seal of Counter Target Jace." There were 3 more reliable threats left in my library: The other 2 Jaces and the other Jwar Isle. While I had played a full set of Ingenuities and 2-3 of my Preordains, I still couldn't find a Jace. I was down to less than 20 cards left in my library, and that natural endgame clock started to set in. And the worst part of this equation? I knew exactly where my last Sphinx was. On turn one, I had Preordained for land off of Darkslick Shores, and put a land on top and Jwar Isle on the bottom.
Fortunately, I found Jace #2 and got to work. I believe I brainstormed once or twice to secure the lead with a couple of hard counters and Doom Blades, and then I started +2ing my Jace on myself to scry into that Jwar Isle. I think a lot of players are addicted to Fatesealing their opponents, to the point where they don't understand that you can target yourself with Jace. I honestly didn't care what my opponent drew for the next 5 turns with what my hand contained...I just needed to end the game. I had such a small number of cards in my library, that if my opponent simply held onto a 7-card hand when I ultimated, I would actually deck before he would. I counted the cards in my library and estimated how often I had preordained cards below my Sphinx over 20 turns ago, and calculated that I would have at least enough turns to kill my opponent with 0-2 cards left in my library in that combat phase. I ended up ultimating Jace and then playing a Sphinx the next turn with 6 cards left in my library, and then I alternated scrying and fatesealing to stack my deck with counters on top and to run him out of potential outs. I had essentially known at 8 cards what my entire library looked like, from top to bottom, so I didn't even need Sphinx to remind me of my topdecks--but I looked anyway to be sure. I took my opponent down to -1 life with one card left in my library.
I was very happy that I remembered my High Tide skills in the first game. I am accustomed to playing Solidarity in Legacy, and from playing that deck I have developed the skill to remember cards on the bottom of the library due to effects like Opt, Impulse, and Peer through Depths. I have stacked my 20 card library in combo turns with a Flash of Insight from the Graveyard in order to play around multiple Emrakuls with Brain Freezes. Compared to those kinds of puzzles, to remember what I Preordain/Jace to the bottom, and subsequently what and where my outs are, is much simpler. Still, I felt like I was doing very well to be using library manipulation to its fullest while I was in such a sleep-deprived state, and that I had not gone on tilt from the nonsense in the beginning of round 6.
Still, we had another game to play, so I went back to business. In game 2, I remember having a stable land flow and my deck performing as it should. Neither of us mulliganed. I planned and stuck a Mind Sculptor, played around my opponent's known and unknown tricks using Duress, and ended the game at least 15 minutes before the round timer was up.
Do you know what the best part of this round was? Nick brought me a Triple Whopper from Burger King, and another energy drink from the van! It even came with french fries! Nick was the real champion for bringing me good food, that day.
Round 8: UWG Next Level Bant
I was paired up to someone with a 6-0-1 record and sat down at table one for the second time, that day. When my opponent sat down, I asked him if we should get a judge to discuss an intentional draw. He swiftly replied that he wanted to play so that his friend could have a shot of making it into top 8. I said, "Are you sure?" He was. So, on this day where I was essentially 7-0 and should have double-drawn, or at least drawn once, I would have to play again to make top 8. The next time your life becomes hard mode, just remember that playing through the pain can still lead to victory.
I lost the dice roll and knew that my opponent was playing some kind of Bant deck with the typical Fauna Shaman/Vengevine nonsense, Jaces, and Mana Leaks, so I was essentially playing against my known worst match-up. My opponent and I both kept 7 card hands, but his draw was slow to the point where his first play was a Sea Gate Oracle (which I allowed), and he didn't find a second green mana until he cast a turn 6 or 7 Birds of Paradise. He was running planeswalkers into counterspells because he had no choice, and when he finally had double Green I had 2 Mindbreak Traps for his pair of Vengevines. Then, I Tech Edged him down to 3 lands, Inquisitioned a Birds away, and then put a Jace on the table and unsummoned his resolved Birds. He hit my Jace with a Sea Gate Oracle to drive it from 2 down to 1 and then he resolved his Birds, but that didn't deter me from using my Jace to unsummon the Birds again, then cast another Jace and start brainstorming. He hit the Jace again and put his Birds back on the table, but this time I countered it. I proceeded to put a Jwar Isle on the table and brainstorm about 7 or 8 turns in a row with my 1 loyalty Jace. I wasn't in any rush to kill my opponent off without finding another Jwar Isle to totally lock the table up, so every turn I held back from attacking, he simultaneously grew more on tilt. Eventually, he conceded so we could play a second game with enough time for him to potentially win a third game.
I thought about offering him a draw again between games. I don't mind if someone elects to play to dreamcrush for a friend to make top 8; he has a right to do that if he wants. Either a draw or a win would have locked me for top 8. But, because he had such a terrible attitude during game one, I decided to keep my mouth shut. He was whining so much about the fact that I had a countermagic for his spells. I definitely drew nuts that game, but I still had to have the knowledge of the match-up in order to lock it up in the manner that I did. I have played hundreds of games in testing against every kind of Fauna Shaman deck imaginable, and I knew that I would win the game by denying my opponent's resources and locking the table up with a Jwar Isle. He could have mulliganed his hand for one with a turn 2 Shaman or turn 1 Birds, and maybe made the game a little harder for me. I sideboarded heavily to bring in Grave Titans, Consume the Meeks, Smothers, and I think one Disfigure for Negates, an Inquisition, and Roils, and even took out a Cancel or 2. I had Consume the Meek in the board to handle random weenie decks and my typical sideboard plan for Fauna Shaman does not normally involve the card, but I estimated that it would provide an enormous blowout in game 2, so I brought them in. Plus, it has a picture of a Mothership on it! How can that be wrong?
We both kept 7 cards again in game 2, and once again I allowed a turn Sea Gate Oracle to resolve and hit me 5 times. My opponent kept trying to resolve expensive planeswalkers and not have his Fauna Shamans destroyed, but failed miserably. He finally decided to animate his Colonnade and attack me with it and his Sea Gate Oracle. He had a Birds and a Wall of Omens on the table as well, so in the beginning of combat I casted a Consume the Meek and got a 4-for-1. Well, it was really just a glorified 2-for-1 because Wall of Omens is literally blank against me (aside from aiding free Mindbreak Traps sometimes) and Sea Gate Oracle is an irrelevant body attached to a Sleight of Hand, but it was still fun to watch him sigh and put 4 cards into the trash can. From there, I resolved 3 Jace's Ingenuities and...then I drew a lot of land. In fact, we both drew a lot of land. Neither of us did much of anything over the course of at least 10 turns. He played the occasional spell, and I would answer it without losing card parity. It came to a point where I actually used all four Tectonic Edges on my opponent's end step to kill all four of his nonbasic lands, taking him entirely off of white mana. Ultimately, I had drawn way more cards than him, and I run Preordain as opposed to Wall of Omens and Sea Gate Oracle, so I topdecked out of the situation first. I drew a Jace and Brainstormed, and he drew a Jace and legened them out. Then I played another Jace and brainstormed into 2 Jwar Isles and a Grave Titan, so I ran that Jwar Isle into an obvious Mana Leak to get rid of it and then next turn played the other Jwar Isle with tons of mana open and a Jace still on the table. The following turn, I rolled Grave Titan out there with 5 mana open for 2 counters and hit my opponent down to 11 life (he had used all four of his Misty Rainforests that game). My opponent played a bunch of cheap creauture to try to clog the board up and buy himself a turn, and then on my turn I played a Consume the Meek to kill all of them and swing for his life total.
So after 8 rounds of swiss, 2 of which I shouldn't have had to play at all, I had lost just one game due to having Doom Blades against black creatures. I was second seed going into top 8, and ready to continue the steamrolling. I killed my energy drink, went to the bathroom, and sat down at the table.
Quarterfinals: Mono Black Mimic Vat Control
My opponent won the dice roll and elected to play first, for obvious reasons. He kept his 7 card hand. I remember sitting next to him in an early round and seeing that his deck was some sort of mono-black deck with Hexmages, so although my hand had enough lands and spells to normally be solid, it also had 2 Doom Blades in it. It was also a little slow. I tried to ship it back for a hand with more suitable answers, and my 6 card hand showed me two more doom blades. However, the rest of the hand was a solid 4-carder with 2 Darkslick Shores, a Mana Leak, and a Preordain. I figured that I could at least brainstorm away the Doom Blades, upon drawing a Jace, so it was an acceptable keep.
On turn 1, my opponent played a Swamp and Duressed me. He saw the hand and we both had a good laugh over it, and then he took my Mana Leak. Personally, I think he should have taken the Preordain and let me have what was functionally a 3-card hand with one counterspell, but perhaps he didn't understand the power level of Preordain. On my turn, I Preordained, and then on his second turn he played a Hexmage. The following turn, I Preordained again and played a Tar Pit. A few turns later, we came to a point where I was down to 12 life and I had drawn out of the nonsense. I played a Jace, brainstormed, chuckled, and said, "Now I can finally put these two Doom Blades on top!" There was a hearty laugh from my opponent, the crowd, and even a couple of the judges. I practically tried to put the Doom Blades on top of my library before even drawing 3 cards. On the next turn, I had 2 mana open for my opponent, who hit me down to 10 with his Hexmage. In his second main phase, he played a Skinrender with 2 lands open. I could have Leaked it, but I figured I would let him have his Hill Giant for a brief moment. He put it on the table, targeted his Hexmage, and cracked that in response targetting my Jace. It was a smart play, but on the next turn I simply played another Jace and unsummoned his Skinrender. He played some things into countermagic, and a turn or two later, I Inquisitioned him and saw another Skinrender as the last card in his hand. Eventually, I put a Sphinx on the table, and then started beating him for 8 a turn with that and a Tar Pit. When he was at 6 life, he played a Sign in Blood to find some answers, and I let it resolve. He had no outs to the Sphinx.
In game 2, I added Smothers and Disfigures for the Doom Blades, which I couldn't wait to take out. I also brought in 2 Duresses for 2 of the Inquisitions, since that would give me better tools for answering expensive black cards like planeswalkers and Mind Sludge. Neither of us took a mulligan, and my opponent opened with a manly turn 2 Nantuko Shade. Unfortunately for him, he had no more lands in hand and no Sign in Blood to draw for more gas, so he hit me a couple of times for 4. I didn't have an answer to the shade yet, but I preordained on turn 3 and found myself an Into the Roil to go along with a Mana Leak already in hand. On his fifth turn, I had four mana open when he attacked with his shade. I declared no blockers, and then he pumped it to a 4/3 again, still on two lands. I bounced it and drew a card and took no damage. I was actually was content to just take the damage and bounce it later, keeping Leak open...but he tapped out all the way and made a mid-combat bounce with kicker possible. After that, I drew a ton of cards with 3 Ingenuities and he never really did anything productive, although he did hit his land drops shortly after his shade was bounced and subsequently countered.
Semifinals: RG Valakut Titan
I won the dice roll and we kept our openers, but my opponent had a god draw involving turn 2 ramp, turn 3 Expedition (which I countered), turn 4 Expedition (which I also countered), land, and Cultivate. He was up a card already, and then when I countered his Titan he had a pair of summoning traps. Fine, I thought. You can have your Titan+double trap on turn 4 against me in game 2, and I'll be ready with my Duresses and Flashfreezes. I sideboarded out 2 Roils, 1 Inquisition, and 2 Doom Blades for the 2 Duresses and 3 Flashfreezes.
In game 2, my opponent had to mulligan down to 6, but proved that he was man enough to go on the man plan, as his first business play was an Obstinate Baloth. I had boarded out most of my removal, but happened to have no counterspell in hand, so I let it resolved. I let it hit me 3 times, then unsummoned it with a Jace. He resolved it again and went to 28, as I wasn't willing to Leak it and walk into a Trap without another counterspell. On my next turn, I simply unsummoned it again. The third time he tried to resolve it, I countered it. After that, I drew enough cards to make the game academic. He tried putting Valakuts on the table to burn me with mountains, but I kept Edging them. Eventually, I played a Jwar Isle, then hit him to 23 and played another, then animated a Tar Pit and hit him down to 10. He played a Titan and I let it resolve because I had already destroyed 3 of his Valakuts that game, so he got his last volcano and one mountain and hit me for 3, putting me at 5 life. I was anticipating him playing one more land and taking me to 2, but he didn't even have that. I was sitting on a couple of counterspells anyways, so there were literally no outs for him after the Titan. On my turn, he was at 10 life while facing down both Sphinxes.
Before the next game, I brought 2 of the Doom Blades back in for the last 2 Inquisitions. Doom Blade is a good answer against the Valakut deck, but I typically take 2-3 for game 2 because they don't often man-plan it against control. Most control decks don't have the muscle to handle Summoning Trap and Ricochet Trap in a Titan-induced counter war, so the ramp decks just focus more on getting to 6 mana quickly and playing threat after threat until something sticks and rapes the control deck. I think my opponent was smart for bringing in more beats against a really permission-heavy deck with Duress effects, but that plan didn't finish me off and in game 3 I was going to have more than one Doom Blade in my deck again.
In game 3, he mulliganed down to 6 again while I was on the draw with a comfortable 7. At some point during the early- to mid-game struggle, my opponent made a potentially critical error. He had an Oracle, some lands, and a Khalni Heart Expedition on the table. He played a spell before playing a land off of the top of his library, and I doom bladed his Oracle in response. He then proceeded to have a dead Expedition stuck on the table for a turn, when he could have immediately been up 3 cards.
Later on in the game, my opponent resolved an Oracle, and on the following turn I played a Jace and unsummoned it, somewhat crossing my fingers. The next turn, he played a Baloth instead, to my puzzlement. I don't remember his draw steps exactly, but I think he probably would have drawn at least 1 card off the top of his library, if not 2, had he just replayed the Oracle. I guess he just wanted a bigger threat on the table, but I don't understand the logic in not trying to go for easy card advantage in a situation where beatdown is clearly going to fail. Either way, I played it safe and basically just brainstormed for a million turns, playing out a ton of lands and Edging his Valakuts.
Eventually, I Duressed him and Fatesealed him, and he had to play his threats out. He had nothing but a Mountain in hand, so I just hit him with 2 Tar Pits, pushing him to 18. On his turn, he topdecked an Evolving Wilds (as I had seen with Jace), and put it on the table to deter me from fatesealing him out again. I still did it anyways, and left another Evolving Wilds on top. I swung with 3 Tar Pits this turn, tapping out. I happened to have a Doom Blade and literally 6 counterspells in hand, but I did the math and realized he had absolutely no outs if I just bashed as hard as possible. He had to crack the Wilds to draw something else, and then he only had a Mountain and one other card from his deck in hand. I was at 20 life still, so if he drew a Titan, the best action would be 2 Valakuts and a land drop or Valakut+Mountain and then land drop, which only does 6 to me. He needed some kind of fetchland and Valakut at the same time to deal with even one Tar Pit and go from 9 to 3 as opposed to 9 to dead on the next attack, and a Titan can't tutor up untapped fetchlands to do just that. An oracle could, but he had to hit those exact sequence of plays, and then next turn I would still be able to just Tech Edge the Valakut, know what his topdeck was from Oracle, bounce the oracle, hit him for 6, have him at 3, and counter anything he played. If he drew an Avenger or most any other creature, I would just swing through it with ultra-evasive Tar Pits. If he had a Baloth or Pelakka Wurm, I could just use 1-2 Tar Pits and have my Jace bounce it and then counter it. If it was a Terastodon, there was no combination that would solve the board; I had all 4 Tar Pits ready to roll out like siege tanks. So I had the pleasure of doming my opponent twice in a row with 3 Tar Pits at once, tapping out a whole 12 lands while holding a hand full of countermagic. We shook hands, and I was off to the finals.
Finals: RG Valakut Titan...again.
This time I lost the dice roll. My opponent thought very carefully about his hand, so I figured he either was seriously mana screwed or he was holding a land-heavy draw with little to no ramp spells. He kept his hand, and I decided to keep my 4 lander with no permission because it had an Into the Roil and 2 Jaces, and big potential to just proactively take the game. This may have been a mistake, but I actually did draw 2 counterspells by the time he casted his turn 6 Titan. Still, I didn't draw enough permission to stop 3 Titans, and I had to deal with the Titan with removal after taking a bunch of damage. A pair of Valakuts pushed me down to 2 life before I finally killed them off with Tectonic Edges. My opponent had nothing but lands on the table, so when I Inquisitioned him, saw a Mountain as his last card, and I had just a Sphinx in hand, so I decided to roll the Sphinx out and cross my fingers. He played the mountain, and then played the topdecked card: an Avenger of Zendikar. I should have just died if he had taken 5 seconds to rearrange the order of operations and play his guy first before playing the land, which would have made 7 creatures with a power value instead of 8 creatures with no power value. However, he didn't make the obvious play, so I had something of a chance. I topdecked another Sphinx and hit him for 5 before playing my second Sphinx. I had such a low number of outs, it was time to be as aggressive as possible. On his turn, he attacked and I blocked, and then he played another Avenger off the top. I swung and left a Tar Pit up to chump block, and had a Cancel for his topdecked spell. Then, I swung him down to 5 with the Sphinx and had another Tar Pit open, but he drew a land and made his zillion plant tokens relevant, so I died.
In sideboarding, I swapped 2 Roils, 2 Doom Blades, and 1 Inquisition for 2 Duresses and 3 Flashfreezes.
Game 2 was a total blow-out. I changed my mind on the end of his second turn and decided not to play control anymore, and decided to instead play land destruction. I countered multiple ramp spells, Doom Bladed an Overgrown Battlement, and stopped him from Exploring. He stuck on 3 lands for a turn, then played Valakut as his 4th land. I Wastelanded it, and then he played another one. I wastelanded that too, sat on 5 lands for 2 turns, and then when I got to 6 mana I played a huge flier. He was only on 4 lands, and I beat his face in with countermagic back-up while he tried to put some lands on the table so he could start casting spells.
In game 3, I was starting to really lose my mind. I had already felt the effects of my energy drink wear off by the beginning of the match, but by game 3 I was basically playing on auto-pilot. Fortunately for me, auto-pilot involved never, ever tapping out and trying to play around more spells than my opponent realistically can have. So we played a match that was 8 turns longer than it should have been because I refused to play a Sphinx out of unwarranted fear. I drew at least half of my deck while my opponent sat on essentially nothing, as he was unable to use Summoning Trap+Titan trickery to break through a countermagic shield. Finally, I played a Duress effect, saw that I was actually very safe from all of his topdecks, and played a Sphinx with Flashfreeze back-up. The game finally came to a close, and I was the state champion!
After the tournament, we went to the Cheesecake Factory, and I rewarded myself with three Long Islands and a big slice of Cheesecake. We had a great time, and were glad that we took the drive north in the middle of Friday night, iron-manning it instead of staying the night in a hotel. When we left the restaurant and got the van back on the 5 freeway, I was in a euphoric state of mind. After being awake for over 36 hours and working my brain like a slave, I slept for the long drive home.
@I-never-smile, how do you deal with fast creature decks, say like the Mono-red that won Georgia States? I have been testing against it and it has been a royal pain.
Also Mindbreak trap, why not just more cancel, negate, or stoic rebuttal?
Wurmcoil engine is also a beating against Valakut and most aggro decks if you can get to six mana. I've got a WNM for constructed happening and i'll post my results then.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=10332184&postcount=124
Tips:
- Most control players already know this but when mulliganing hands against players that play Jace Beleren and they are going first you might want to mulligan a hand without a 2 mana counter. Because if they tapout for Jace Belerenon turn 3 and you don't counter that gives the opponent info on your hand with no 2 mana counters. There is probably a way to use this to your advantage in some situations, but not many.
- Some UW lists will bring in Leyline of Sanctity against the discard. Game 2 I brought in all my discard and ended up drawing 4 discard spells with a leyline in play from when the game started. I think an extra Into the Roil would be good in the SB for some situations.
Note: Online Alara is still STD and Scars is not out yet so the decks are not exact.
Never Smile when you get a chance can you explain sideboarding for the deck.
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showpost.php?p=10332184&postcount=124
My meta is about 33% control and control variants, 25% ramp, and 25% aggro, with the rest being rogue, so inquisition is out of the question over duress right?
How vital is jace 1.0? What about 2.0?
What bombs and little guys do I need to run?
Thanks.
RWBoros LandfallWR
GWRG/w/r Fauna ShamanRWG
It seems sweet, but I'm not sure if the meta is right for it. Pretty dead against Ramp. I guess it deals with Primeval Titan, but they still get two activations from it.
Against U/W it hits a Sea Gate Oracle, I guess. Can reduce the size of a titan, but still unexciting.
Shines against RDWs/WW builds, however. Really awesome early 2 for 1s are great against aggresive decks.
at this point, it's hard to say that he's worthy of the mainboard unless the meta calls for it.
I'm trying to cram Argent Sphinx into the Draw Go version. ... It's impossible I think. Egh. [I was taking out the JTMS's and Preordains and adding Prophetic Prism/Crystal Ball. ... YEAH. :P. ... Oh well, will probably be fun at FNM? *edit* I changed it into mono-U and it seems to be doing better, so that's ... a thing. But eh. Worse than this deck.]
and eyes are full of death besides
but luckily the soul is wise -
it sees beyond my blindness and
forced failure makes a better guise,
so as i come again alive,
it feels like life's a decent plan
Comments: Calcite Snapper is a card I haven't seen much of in new thread but I must reccomend it and shines in every much except ramp/Valakult.
Brittle Effigy for Emrakul/Ulamog
and lastly thinking of swapping a Jace Beleren for a Jace's Ingenuity.
Ideas PLease
Tried to pull away, but now I'm Back At it
Love is Emphatic, cards need to be played
Hailing from the BA, accumulating CA"
UB Control
"I saved a life... my own. Am I a hero? I can’t really say...... but, yes."
-Michael Scott
Happy to see this archetype having some life to it, happier to see life in two forms.
2 Roils is often enough to get rid of threats like leyline and subjects it to being countered. roil cantrips, so it's not really a 2f1.
Skill is an ability that relates more so to the type of deck that's built and how said player pilots it. It also relates to the ability to assess the board and use the cards available to you in the most optimal way relative to each situation.
When a deck is filled with above par cards and every play is solid, there comes a diminishing need to "think" for the lack of wanting to use a better word.
For now, people seem most curious about 2 things, so I will briefly answer those questions.
I determined my splash color to be black about one week before the event, due to Doom Blade being the best maindeck spot removal spell for the format. It may change if black decks grow in popularity, but the metagame was quite defined in favor of Doom Blade before the tournament. After choosing Doom Blade, I decided I wanted to have some kind of supplementary removal/disruption spell. I already was planning on running 3 Jaces and 2 Roils to have some bounce games in addition to the Doom Blades, but I really wanted 2-3 more slots of non-permission answers in the deck.
At that point in time, I was running 14 counterspells main instead of 3. My answer suite looked like the following:
2 Negate
2 Deprive
4 Cancel
2 Mindbreak Trap
2 Into the Roil
2 Ratchet Bomb
Ratchet Bomb was not a bad card, and I actually have a pretty good deal of experience playing with Powder Keg from playing Eternal events. Actually, if it was Powder Keg, I probably would have kept it in the deck. Powder Keg kills manlands, and Ratchet Bomb does not. It doesn't matter that Ratchet Bomb can kill Planeswalkers in the context of a permission deck because you shouldn't be letting them resolve, unless that walker is Jace Beleren or you have the walker solved with board position/bounce as soon as it resolves. Ultimately, Ratchet Bomb was a weak answer to Beleren and cheap permanents, and to easy to play around.
I talked with my good friend Charly about the deck over the phone, and we both agreed that Inquisition was a better tool for disruption/removal to solve cheap threats which a Powder Keg/Explosives variant was designed to handle. It 'kills' a creature in the RDW player's hand early, or it takes a Burst Lightning before it gets kicked later. It gets rid of a Beleren or a Khalni Heart Expedition or a Cultivate. It's not a Mana Leak, but it often fills the same job in the early turns, and it also allows you to fit a tapland or Preordain into your game plan when you cast it on turn 2. I almost wanted 1-2 Smother in my maindeck anyways, and Inquisition did that job better because it was good against every single deck in the format. After all, if you look at your opponent's hand and he has nothing but 4+ costing spells, you should win the game with a permission deck...shouldn't you? Especially with the information you have just attained....
About sideboarding: you guys will just have to wait for the guide.
Depends on a few things.
-If its game one and hes ramping my mana leak may be dead soon so i pause and consider the following.
-Some dual/tri colour ramps can get land screwed so i liked to Mana Leak UGR-Froce builds if all i see is green lands sources. There is nothing more satisfying than a smug player chastising your Mana Leak on Cultivate and he ends up in a mana screw.
-Mana Leak is relevant for the frist Titan, usally so holding onto it is a good thing
- If he is going to get past Mana Leak after this ramp i do it, its a dead card, tap him down for your turn at least
So to sum up i mana leak a ramp if i)there is a good chance it slows colour fixing ii)if his ramp is going to take him to 6+ mana sources therefore leak is dead iii)i want to force him to tap down so he cant mess with my turn
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
My build is somewhere between draw-go and the less counterspell heavy versions, with 7 maindeck counterspells, 3 doom blades, 2 into the roil. And 3 all is dust with eldrazi temple support!
It is good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.
If your choosing between Duress and Inquestion main DURESS! Duress hits every card black has problems dealing with. Enchtment/Artifact/PWer, Inqustion can be side against weenie aggro/control (but a lesser ration than duress) What 3 drop does any colour have that Doom Blade/Into the Roil cant answer before it kills you? Then think about what cards above 3 mana Doom Blade/Into the Roil cant deal with before it kills you. Duress maindecked everytime.
So there is a counter argument BUT it depends on the deck. If your playing permission heavy inqustion is good to stop early aggro so you can get counter magic open turn 2-3.Tthen your 12+ counters stop the +3cmc threats anyway. I still say Duress but letting you know thats the counter opinion.
Starting with U/B bombs.
-Grave Titan does 10/10 for 6 need justifcation/explanation on how to use? Not really. Lets continue.
-Frost Titan more useful than Grave Titan. A precison tool to the gravetitan sledgehammer. Tapdown big threats Wurmcoil/Titans. This is why it is useful, the pesudo shroud ability is nice do nothing. I've killed many of them with a 4CMC Doomblade. 4 Mana is a non issue past turn 6. White has 1-2 CMC removals so its same story as black (they will pay the cost anyway). Red cant deal with 6/6 anything easily, so counting on the "shroud" to work isn't going to work out.
-Sphinx of Jwar Isle, dont doubt the Sphinx. In permission builds where you tap out when you think its right to play he wont get killed by anything less than DoJ topdeck (besides sac effects).
-I say Abyssal Persectuor because I have had great success with it. Lots of people hate it, lots love it. B/U gives it ample removal. It survies TitanForce/Red Decks, huge body, evasion. I reccomend giving it a try.
-Jace 2.0 vs Jace 1.0? Obvious Jace 2.0 is more useful. Bounce stuff, fatesate, brainstorms. He isnt essential to any build like he is to Turboland but every state winning deck ran a minimum 3 of...
- I honestly think that these cards are the only worthwhile bombs. Now the bread and butter
-Doom Blade, rotation happens/meta changes and black has the best removal (as it should)
-Creeping Tar Pit, plansewalking killing madness. Has finished more games than i care to count.
-Duress Played mained or sided, very powerful. A fantastic card in the artifact set/PWer madness and against U/W control. Gives us a major advantage
-Into the Roil, unlike white we have no answers to many cards when they hit the board, this provides a pusdo solution and stops a PWer going off, run as a 2 off in almost every deck, it needs to be run as a two of in every deck
-Jaces Ingenutiy/Preordain/Sign in Blood/Jace 1.0, parts meet the engine
-Consume the Meek, useful vs aggro/manalands
-Consuming Vapors, works well with the card above, very good against Titans/Sphinx
- Mana Leak, run 4 or none
- Negate, help win the counter war/stop koth etc
- Trinket Mage, finds Volatic Key/Everflowing Chalice/Brittle Effigy/Chimeric Mass or Nihil Spellbomb
- Nihil Spellbomb, worth a second mention. Stops Bloodghast/Sun Titan/Vengvine/Phoneix and we are in the colours to tutor it.
Other useful things
-Gatekeeper of Malakir, kills then chumps, hits Frost Titan and Shroud. Sac effects are very overlooked. Consuming Vapors compleltly decimates Titans. Forst Titan cant dodge this baby
-Memorocide, fantastic sideboard, maybe 1 or 2 mained max
- Flashfreeze, troublesome ramp/red matchups
- Dispel, overlooked, win the counter war post SBD with ease, stop EOT things
Then some other okay options...cancel/skinrender/stoic rebuttle/smother/disfigure/inqusition of kozliek
You need to run these if you want to resemble a B/U control deck.
I always work around this basic control template anyway, just adjusted for the standard game. 26 Lands 2 Bombs/Wincon, Minimum Counter package, Minimum Draw Package, Minimum Removal
26 B, U, B/U Lands
3-4 of those CreepingTar Pit
2 Into the Roil (because we cant answer certain cards)
2 Doom Blade (Minimum)
4 Mana Leak
2 Spinx/Frost/Grave Titan/Wurmcoil (its a bomb)
2 Duress/Inqusition/Memoricde
4 Preordain or 2 Jaces Ingenuity
Weclome to the wacky world of B/U
Because if your running one creature they are banking removal making it more likely that it is going to die. Sphinx makes it all the more impossible to deal with.
I hope your running no Titans/Creatures/Plansewalkers. Post your list then let us see. Works extremly well with artifact builds. I wont deny that, I run it in monoblue but i run only Trinket Mage as my coloured permanant.
I encourage you to do the same. Instead of FNM try Friday Night Something Spontaneous. Instead of thousands of hours and dollars on plastic imagine it with a significant other or friends sharing something meaningful. I randomly typed a new password, so bon voyage itches i encourage you to follow suit! Cheers
Right, but most exile effects are gone now, and Skithiryx regenerates. The most popular forms of removal will not work against it, and it kills faster (not to mention is a better blocker, too.) So if you are only running 3 SoJI, why not run 3 Skithiryx instead? Both have one removal spell (2 after sideboard for Skithiryx) that work on them (assuming you have mana open for regeneration.)
It is good to learn from your failures, but I prefer to learn from the failures of others.
Condemn and Celestial Purge get rid of Skittles, but can't touch the Sphinx.
The nice thing about the Sphinx is he makes removal in the first game dead. I suppose you could side in Skittles in the second game, hoping they pulled the removal...
I like using spreading seas against valakut. Get there green mana early and valakut later.works like a charm
Which would you rather be able to hit against a B deck Vampire Hexmage, Nantuko shade or Mind SLudgewhich you could easily counter later on.
The only change I am wanting after some play with the deck is at least 1 more 1-2 cmc counter in the main.
This is exactly my thought process. IoK is better main deck because you can use it before you're able to have mana up to counter.
4 Darkslick Shores
2 Drowned Catacomb
4 Tectonic Edge
7 Island
4 Swamp
4 Mana Leak
2 Negate
2 Cancel
2 Stoic Rebuttal
3 Mindbreak Trap
4 Doom Blade
2 Into the Roil
4 Preordain
4 Jace's Ingenuity
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
3 Flashfreeze
2 Duress
2 Disfigure
2 Smother
2 Consume the Meek
2 Sign in Blood
2 Grave Titan
I have been playing UW Control with a similar shell since the very last Standard PTQ in Las Vegas, and I barely missed top 8 there and at the 5k in Denver with the deck. After all of the ridiculous Shards creatures and multicolor spells rotated out of standard, Standard became a much simpler format with an extremely defined metagame. It was crystal clear that there were four major archetypes:
Primeval Titan ramp decks
Fauna Shaman/Vengevine creature decks
U/x Control decks
and Red Deck Wins
There are also a ton of random jank decks. White Weenie, Green Elves, G/B Poison, et cetera. All of those decks have their champion decks, but I tested the crap out of them and was confident that they were all essentially garbage. People like to build along a theme and defend their ideas way more than they like to be realistic and understand the fact that (metaphorically speaking) there won't be a new Sovereigns of Alara without Noble Hierarch and Knight of the Reliquary. For these random match-ups, I wanted about 4 spot removal spells, and decided upon a split between Smother and Disfigure. Disfigure is really good at providing insane tempo boosts, and it actually kills a great many creatures in the format, but I didn't want to play too many of them and draw dead. Therefore, I ran 2 Smothers as 'big disfigures.' I also wanted to run 2 Consume the Meek because that card is such a blow-out. Did you know? In the Eldrazi language, Consume the Meek literally translates to "Rape by Mothership!"
Ramp decks were divided into 3 sub-catagories: Valakut, Eldrazi, and others. The Valakut deck would be the worst match-up because its Primeval Titans literally will kill you and Valakut makes ramp spells much more dangerous than they typically are. Eldrazi Green is nearly as good, but if your manabase is stable enough to survive through Tectonic Edges and you have your own Edges to stop big Eldrazi spells, you should win. You just counter ramp spells and don't let your opponent draw extra cards, and the game is pretty simple. Any Titan deck without Valakut or Eldrazi temples was basically a bye, because it wasn't using Titan to find powerful lands. The only real complication to the ramp match-up is Summoning Trap, but that card dynamically changes the games by itself. I had to have a plan for that card, and ultimately I used Flashfreezes and Duresses out of the board to support the cheap counters and Mindbreak Traps in winning counter wars against Titan+Trap+Trap.
Control decks wouldn't be a problem because I was fairly certain I could win a control mirror by having a more solid build with the boat of Ingenuities, Preordains, and Tectonic Edges, as well as Jwar Isle as the ultimate threat in the mirror. I wanted a couple of slots dedicated to Control decks so I could take out a couple of removal spells for something more relevant, but otherwise I expected bringing in Duresses to be enough. After all, a properly built permission deck should be able to win against other control decks, so long as the deck doesn't stumble hard and the opponent doesn't stick an early Luminarch Ascension. For the mirror, I decided that I would board 2 Volition Reins because it was both a bomb and card advantage, as well as being another answer. However, in testing I understood the true power of Neo-Confiscate: it's card advantage. When you let someone have a Jace and then steal it, you're only up 3 for 2 cards. In order to get into positions where you're gaining from Volition Reins, you have to have at least 6 mana. I would rather just play a cheap draw spell so that I could avoid stumbling, and win out from bad positions as well as the good ones. Sign in Blood fit that bill to a tee. It's extra Preordains and almost Jace's Ingenuity, all at once. I was very happy when I figured out that little piece of technology.
I anticipated the ramp decks to knock most of the Fauna Shaman decks out of contention over the course of the first few rounds, so I ended up just dedicating 2 slots to Grave Titans and relying on some sideboarded removal to stall the Vengevine deck until I could just clog the board up and win with a stalemate. I didn't think I would play against more than 2-3 Fauna Shaman decks because they seemed poor for a metagame ruled by Primeval Titan. Vengevine is a big threat to a permission deck, but not much of a threat to a deck who is casting Aliens or blowing your face off with Volcanoes. So I let that match-up almost fall by the wayside and didn't go ape with a bunch of sideboard cards.
Finally, Red Deck Wins. I was planning on boarding some number of Smother and/or Disfigure from the beginning of the deck's inception, and counterspells rule against any of RDW's shenanigans (Koth, Devastating Summons, et cetera). If I could remove the first threat and play draw-go until playing a Sphinx, I would win pretty easily. As it turned out, I was winning well over 75% of my pre-sideboarded games against Red due to Preordain, Inquisition and Doom Blade being so darn powerful. I already had Flashfreezes and 4 spot removal spells in the board, so I didn't have to dedicate anything special to Red. I would lower my curve by trading Mindbreak Traps for Flashfreezes, and swap out Roils and Negates for Disfigures and Smothers.
The tournament turned out to be 8 rounds of swiss, with somewhere between 170 and 190 players. I was ready to crush some skulls.
Round 1-BU Midrange with Jace and Mana Leaks
I lost the die roll.
Nobody mulled in game one. My opponent opened with turn 1 Inquisition, taking a Mana Leak. Then he followed it up with a pair of Black Knights, a Jace which I countered, and a Bloodwitch. I was holding a pair of Doom Blades and no card advantage, so I died rather quickly to the beats.
In game 2, nobody mulled. I had Disfigures and Smothers in place of my Doom Blades, so when he played his cheap creatures I played even cheaper answers and drew cards while doing so. When I ran my opponent out of cards, I layed some beats. My opponent had fetched to 19, then he got hit by a Tar Pit to 16, and then took a pair of hits from a Sphinx and Tar Pit together while I held up Cancel mana.
In game 3, My opponent took a mulligan to 6 while I happily kept my opener of 7. I had the pleasure of seeing a board position where I had a Sphinx of Jwar Isle and my opponent had a Malakir Bloodwitch. The rest of the game felt exactly like being on the Sphinx side of that board position.
Round 2-UGR Turboland (Destructive Force?) with Green and Blue Titans
I lost the die roll again.
Nobody mulled in game one. My opponent opened with Raging Ravine. I understood that I would likely be playing against a Primeval Titan deck, and hopefully it was not the Valakut one. That version is the most dangerous of all the Titan decks because its Titans literally can (will?) kill you, whereas the other ones just try to draw a lot of cards, cast ridiculously-costed Aliens, and/or hurt your manabase with Tectonic Edges. In addition, Valakut itself is an engine that is designed to be fantastic against a permission deck, even one with 4 Wastelands. Fortunately for me, my opponent played an Island on turn 2 to follow his Raging Ravine. This meant I was going to be dealing with some kind of Turboland variant--the best of Titan match-ups for me. I remember my opponent sticking on 2 lands for a couple of turns, and then I countered an Explore to further keep him from drawing mana. I rolled a Jwar Isle out and quickly put him out of his misery, so we could play some real Magic. I think he told me that his hand was a greedy keep, but to his credit--I doubt it's that greedy to keep a 2-lander with all 3 of your colors in a deck with 27 lands, cantrips, and plenty of ramp spells.
In game 2, neither of us mulled. He opened with a free Leyline of Anticipation and a tapland. A couple of turns later, I Into the Roiled the Leyline (for simplicity's sake, but also to possibly bait a Mana Leak) and then countered it when it was recast. I then used Jace's Ingenuities to chain mass card advantage together while my opponent built his manabase and tried to find/resolve his own source of card advantage. He ended up resolving a second blue Leyline, but by that point in time I had the technology to counter a spell and cast an Ingenuity in the same turn, and then to have two hard counters open while I resolved a Jwar Isle. 4 swings later, and I was victorious.
Round 3-RG Valakut Titan
For the third time in a row, I lost a die roll. Apparantly my deck loved card advantage so much, it instinctively chose to draw first.
Nobody mulled. My opponent had a small handful of threats and enough mana to cast his spells, but I drew a lot of cards. At one point, I allowed a Primeval Titan to resolve so that I could resolve an Ingenuity instead, and my opponent hit me for 6 with Valakuts. However, that Ingenuity found me the second Tectonic Edge, which I used alongside Doom Blade to regulate the board position. To give you an idea of what threat my opponent tried to stick next: I managed to bounce the same Wurmcoil Engine roughly 6 times. This is no exaggeration. I was too busy casting Jace's Ingenuities, Wastelanding lands, and setting up taplands to care about a random 6-drop creature. I Roiled it once with kicker, unsummoned it 3 times with a Jace, and then unsummoned it again a couple of times while I finished casting the rest of my draw spells. I ultimately ended up countering it. After I drew a great many cards, I won the game by beating face with a pair of Creeping Tar Pits.
Neither of us mulliganed in game 2, but my opponent had a very rough time as I countered ramp spells, Duressed him for information, and arrived at a position where I could simply tap out for a turn 6 Jwar Isle without any serious repercussions. As my life pad reads: 20-15-10-5....
After one of the games, my opponent told me that he was casting Wurmcoil Engine repeatedly because it was the worst threat in his hand, and he wanted it to eat a counterspell so he would have a better chance of resolving one of the two Primeval Titans in his hand. He thought it might have been wrong, but I told him that I was holding 2 counterspells that entire time. This is the power of Jace's Ingenuity in a permission deck, and this is why I didn't lose a single game in which I resolved a Jace's Ingenuity. Your opponent has to choose between playing his best threat into counters and playing his worst threat so you can draw a bunch of cards and basically ignore it. He can't simply sit there and let you draw a lot of cards, but he can't actually resolve his good threats. And because of the nature of drawing cards, each Ingenuity draw you deeper towards another Ingenuity, which leads you into anything you want to draw (if it's actually in your deck). The same thing happened with Thirst for Knowledge and Fact or Fiction in their hey-days across multiple formats, including Vintage. Some people have this ill-founded logic that Jace's Ingenuity is too clunky to play in a control deck as a 4-of because they believe it's better to have more answers or relevant threats. In fact, Jace's Ingenuity is what stops you from running out of answers, and there really is no more relevant a threat than card advantage. How often do people actually win with a rook down in Chess, if their opponent isn't comboing off with a checkmate pattern? How often do people win games of Starcraft where their opponent has successfully expanded 2 times more than them without having a smaller army? All games revolve around resources, and Jace's Ingenuity finds you more resources on multiple levels.
Round 4-Red Deck Wins
I finally won a die roll! It was a good match-up for me to do so, although I doubt I needed to be on the play in order to win the first game.
My opponent and I kept our 7s in game one. I Preordained and set up shop while my opponent burned me and played 2-drops. I countered his threats one at a time, and then one turn he didn't follow up his attack with another threat...so I end of turn removed his only threat. I eventually found and resolved a Jwar Isle, and was at 9 life when he scooped.
After we each presented and cut each other's decks for the second game, my opponent took a while to debate the merits of keeping his opening hand. My hand included solid mana, 2 Disfigures, a counterspell, and a draw spell. While he was deliberating his mulligan decision, I prompted some dialogue:
"If your opener is double Goblin Guide on one land, I totally have this. For serious."
He smiled and glanced at my facial expression briefly before looking back down and continuing his gray hair-growing tough decision.
"Honestly. Usually I think keeping double Guide and one Mountain is the way to go against control, but if you do that I'm laying the hammer down."
He replied, and we had a few laughs. I got the impression that he didn't even have one Goblin Guide in his opener, although dual Disfigures were in their holsters, cocked and ready.
Ultimately he kept his 7 and played nothing on turn 1. I played a Tar Pit and passed. Then, on turn 2 he played his second land, tapped his two mountains, and played a Ratchet Bomb. I was honestly quite surprised to see it, although I was even more surprised when he played a second one on turn 3. I countered that one for simplicity's sake, and then a little while later I Inquisitioned him, put a Jace on the table, and drew some cards. When he got the Bomb to 4, I let my Jace die and then put another one on the table the following turn. I drew many, many cards that game and the only damage my opponent mustered up was 4 damage from an early Staggershock. I am accustomed to playing against red decks in games where I stabilize at under 5 life and cautiously play around all the possible topdecks for a dozen turns, so it wasn't that difficult to handle one game in which my opponent never stuck a threat and I permanently stayed at 16 life.
At one point in time during the second game, my opponent tried to Ricochet Trap my EoT Jace's Ingenuity. I explained to him that it didn't target, showed him the card as proof, and then thanked him for the free information. I believe it was slightly rude to say it in the way that I did, but I was quite carried away that my read on the 'unknown cards' in his hand were exactly as predicted. Plus, he was playing Sligh! I'm a cold-hearted Islands disciple, so I firmly believe there is a private hell for Red Deck Wins players.
Round 5-UR Destructive Force
I happily won the die roll for the second time in a row, especially at table one!
Neither of us mulliganed in game one. I drew all 4 Preordains while my opponent stuck on about 5 lands and drew 0 Preordains of his own. I remember pretty easily resolving a Jwar Isle with 2-3 counters backing it up, and ending the game before my opponent could start casting his big spells. He was discarding Pyroclasms and having a really tough time keeping up with his dead cards and not hitting his draw spells.
In game 2, we both almost simultaneously saw bad hands and shipped them back. I think the only land in that hand was a Tectonic Edge. Then, we both kept 6-card hands. I love it when players mulligan down evenly; playing with equally smaller hands makes for interesting games with limited resources! Any time in which there is a smaller number of cards in hand or both players have a low mana count, it reminds me of RTS games like Starcraft where the game is all about worker harassment and micromanaging unit control. In any case, this game it was my turn to stick on mana. I believe that I missed a land drop after hitting my third, and then a turn or two later I Preordained out of it and started finding more land drops. I knew from a discard spell that my opponent was sitting on Jaces, Ingenuity, and countermagic; he and I were on the same Draw-Go page. Both of us were simply rolling lands out and using Preordain/Ingenuity to sculpt hands and manabase for a long time. It was a very enjoyable game of chess with cards. While I had the edge of Duress effects for information, and I hit at least one more Ingenuity than my opponent, he had the advantage of a much more stable manabase. I was drawing a lot of Swamps and semi-dead Tectonic Edges, while he was sitting on tons of basic Islands and live Tectonic Edges.
We came to a turning point in the game when I finally drew a Mindbreak Trap. I Duressed my opponent, seeing Negate, two Big Jaces, and Volition Reins. I took one of his Jaces after some deliberation. A couple of turns later, I had two Jaces of my own in hand, and decided to initiate the counter-war. Our manabases were relatively equal in size, with him at the advantage in blue sources. I had 6 blue sources, 7 non-blue sources, and no land drop yet. My opponent had about 3-4 Mountains and the rest basic Islands, with a total of 13 lands. I tapped 2UU and played a Jace of my own. He didn't hesitate, and allowed it to resolve. I was a bit surprised, but understood that he wished to fight over the Volition Reins instead, which made sense with his far superior blue mana situation. I brainstormed and found another blue source, but it was a Darkslick Shores. I played it tapped, passed the turn, and awaited the inevitable reaction.
On his turn, he played his 14th land and cast a Volition Reins targetting my Jace. I Canceled it, with 4UU open. He tapped down to RUUUUU and Negated my Cancel. I responded by tapping down to 3U and casting Mana Leak on his Reins, cutting him off of mana. He payed the 3 and had UUU left over. I responded to the Negate again by casting an Into the Roil unkicked, targetting my own Jace. He had 3 Islands untapped and I had just a Swamp and Tectonic Edge untapped, so he cast the inevitable Mana Leak on my Into the Roil. Since that was his third spell of the turn (after Reins and Negate), I responded by casting Mindbreak Trap, targetting all of his spells and my own Into the Roil. I exiled everything on the stack but my Cancel, which fizzled and fell to the graveyard. And, because my own Roil was countered, I kept my Jace on the table. Shortly thereafter, I put a Sphinx on the table and put a literal end to the game.
After the counter-war, my opponent revealed that he had a Deprive still in his hand, but with only one mana left to cast it. Looking back at that critical fight, if he had used the Deprive on Leak instead of paying 3 mana, it would have looked like this:
He casts Volition Reins, leaving 8 open. I Cancel, 6UU open. He Negates, 6 open. I Leak, leaving 3U open. He Deprives, 4 open. I Roil, 1B open. He Leaks, 2 open. I Trap. He still has 2 open at that point, but no extra counterspell in hand. Now, let's say that he had an extra counter and I also still didn't have another Mindbreak Trap or another blue source...he gets the Jace, but is fully tapped-out. He can brainstorm, fateseal, or scry with a 3-counter Jace. On my turn, I resolve a Jwar Isle, play another Jace to kill his, and pass with 1UUU open and a Cancel up (around Tectonic Edge). Even if he wants to roll his other Jace out there, I don't care if it resolves...my Sphinx will simply kill it. If he plays a Destructive Force or Jace's Ingenuity, or a Sphinx of his own, I have Cancel at the ready. At that point in time, it is impossible for him to have more than one extra counterspell (from brainstorming with the stolen Jace), and it is highly unlikely he can recover at that point. So even if he did have that extra counterspell in the war, it was not looking good for him to take the game without some very immediate rips.
After the match, I was exhausted. There is more to a tournament than simply playing games of Magic. Equally important is keeping a cool frame of mind and objectively making the best decisions possible, based on reads and careful calculations. I had not made many mistakes so far during the day, only really messing up with open-ended Preordain situations. However, playing a difficult control deck for 5 rounds was nowhere near as exhausting as the fact that I had woken up at 10 AM the previous day, and road tripped for 5 hours in the wee small hours of the morning to arrive at Sacramento for the event. I have a history of sleeping issues due to multiple complicated sleep disorders, and am accustomed to being awake for 2 to 3 days on end or running on merely 2-3 hours of sleep each day, but it still was a challenge to keep my focus and composure after being awake for nearly 30 hours. I packed my stuff into my bag and went outside to the group's traveling machine to grab another energy drink and listen to some death metal. In the car, I told myself that there was only one more round to play, and then I could double-draw and take a couple of naps before the top 8. All I would have to do is focus on one round at a time, as Brad Nelson once said. I thought: I may not have slept, but while I have been awake I have played 30 games of Starcraft and more than that many games of Magic. I was 5-0 in matches and I had only dropped one game due to having Doom Blades maindeck against a black deck. I was ready to win some strategy games, whatever they were.
Round 6: Bureaucracy
As I stepped out of the car and strolled back to the building, I felt on top of the world. In the physical sense, I was far beyond tired, but I was playing the best Magic of my life and my brain was in peak condition. It was time to crush someone and draw into the top 8.
However, the pairings sheet told me that I was to play on table 11. That couldn't be right. I checked my record, and--sure enough, I was recorded as having 12 points. I immediately walked to the judges' station to fix the problem. En route, my previous round opponent found me and told me he was looking for me; that he was wondering why he was sitting on 15 points and told to play on table one, again. We both went to talk to the event staff together, and explained that we believed our match result was accidentally flipped in his favor. The head judge dug up our match slip and showed it to us. The first thing we were asked was whether it was our signatures on the sheet. The score (which was not in my handwriting) was marked 2-0 in my opponent's favor. We both told the head judge that our signatures were on the sheet, but the score should be reversed. The tournament organizer, who was standing next to him, told us that the result was permanent. According to him, regardless of the fact that my opponent was admitting defeat, they were unable to fix the problem. It was "too much work" for the TO and judges to either switch some tables around or re-pair the round. I told him that we understood how much of a pain this was for other people in the tournament, but it would only take 5-10 minutes and we were trying to correct the mistake as soon as we found out about it. I was curious about their stance on this situation, because I have been in at least 3 PTQs where a round this late in the tournament was repaired due to a clerical error. I also have participated in several PTQs where players have been individually told to go to other tables due to late-dropped opponents or no-shows in round 1 or some other circumstances. I knew that it was possible for the staff to make adjustments to rounds, and was curious as to why we were suddenly given an ironclad 'no' to correcting an obvious mistake. As the TO expressed, our "signatures were on the sheet, so the result [was] irreversible."
The head judge walked off to take care of some other business, and my round 5 opponent said that he was going to have to go play his round. I stayed to talk to the TO, because I wanted some information about the situation. I told him that I understood that his word was final for the event, but perhaps he could tell me how to contact one of his higher-ups. I wanted to know if I could speak with one of the people in charge of Tournament Organizers some time after the event, and if he could just give me any sort of name, email, phone number, website, or contact information, I would have been happy. Upon my request, he told me nothing. I told him that I wasn't going to hold anything against him for his call, but I just wanted to speak to someone who makes decisions about the way these situations are handled. After all, there is someone out there in the DCI who changed the way that certain rules violations are handled, and that happened last only months ago. If they can change the way that corrections are made, shifting game losses to warnings and vice versa, they can possibly change the way that tournament policy is written or interpreted. I'm no lawyer, but I'm educated enough in the modern world to understand the way that a bureaucratic system works.
The tournament organizer's response was worse than nothing; he gave me the run-around. He threw around words like 'bureaucracy' and 'committee,' patronizing me. I told him that I didn't even care that I was getting a loss at this point, but that it was important to me to find a way so that the next person in my shoes will not be treated in the same manner. After all, it was crystal clear that there was no collusion or ill intent involved. Maybe I made a mistake on the slip, but it should be reversible if the other party admitted the result was wrong. As I told the TO, "what motivation does he have for admitting defeat?" Nevertheless, the tournament organizer claimed ignorance to any sort of person or committee to whom I could contact about the way this rules policy works. Personally, I believe he was just covering his own end, but I truthfully didn't even care about naming him as someone who poorly handled the situation. I merely wanted to see that this set of circumstances is handled better, down the road. The conversation was over at that point, so I told the TO that I needed an extension for my next round, and then I went to table 11.
Round 6.5: BGR Mimic Vat Control
I sat down in front of an opponent who thought that he was about to be very lucky with his opponent receiving a game loss for being late, or possibly even winning a free round at 4-1 for a no-show. When I sat down, he was definitely bummed. I started telling the sob story, but then quickly stopped and decided to return my focus to playing the best technical Magic possible. To my opponent, I said "I may be a bit upset right now, but I will do my best to not take this out on you. I will try not to become emotional about this experience, but if I do, I apologize in advance." I shook his hand, wished him good luck, and we rolled some dice.
I won the dice roll, and my opponent had to ship his hand down to 6 while I kept my 7. My opponent opened with some Jund-colored dual lands and a turn 2 Vampire Hexmage, which resolved while I was playing taplands and Preordains. But, on turn 4, I felt really safe, so I simply rolled a Jace out there and brainstormed. He swung in for 2, then killed the Jace with his Hexmage to slow the card advantage down. Still, due to the fact that he was playing a Mimic Vat deck against a nearly creature-less deck, and due to the fact that I had twice as many answers as he had threats, the game was never really off the ground.
In game 2, neither of us mulliganed. I remember the game taking a very short amount of time, as my opponent never stuck a threat, and after I got up to a high land count, I quickly beat him down with a pair of Tar Pits.
I had a 7 minute extension for a round that took maybe 10 or 15 minutes to complete, and was done with the match halfway through the round with a permission deck. A lot of people claim that control decks, especially draw-go ones, take a long time to win matches. I have news for those players: I had at least 10 or 15 minutes to spare after every single match, up until this point. I never went to time the entire tournament, either. If you are too slow of a player to finish your rounds on time, you can change that fact. And if you are not a slow player, you shouldn't have a problem completing rounds with any deck that has even just one win condition. Rarely should matches ever, ever go to time, although it is definitely possible.
In any case, I went outside and found my friend Nick, who wasn't playing that day. I told him about the stain on my perfect match record, and requested that he had some kind of meal for me before the next round. You can use your imagine as to what I said specifically, but I elaborated that if he didn't bring me some food, a certain someone would probably be left in Sacramento that night. It was good to lighten the situation up with humor, but also important that he got the message: if someone didn't bring me food, I was going to lose it. A few times in the past, friends of mine have forgotten me or someone else when going on a food run at a big Magic tournament, and I'm sure any veteran grinder has been in that position as well. Dinner is not an option! I would have driven myself to grab some food, but not after being awake for over 30 hours....
Round 7: UW Control
I was back up to table 2 and there was a sizable crowd watching our match, from the very beginning. I lost the dice roll, and nobody mulliganed. I had a rough start with a draw that stuck on 3 lands for a turn, then I had to Preordain and play a tapland. My opponent simply played a turn 5 Jace Beleren with Negate back-up for my counterspell, and +2ed it to play around an on-board Creeping Tar Pit. The Jace stuck on the table for at least 5 or 6 turns, and during the entire time I never had an opportunity to connect into it with a Tar Pit, so instead I casted some Ingenuities and Preordains, plotting my escape from the soft lock. My first Ingenuity was Leaked while I was on 5 lands, but the next one stuck and brought home the bacon. I managed to Inquisition my opponent, grab his Cancel, and Roil his Beleren. My opponent had been Spreading and Edging my Tar Pits, but he didn't have the countermagic muscle anymore to stop me from rolling a Mind Sculpter on the table and brainstorming, then letting it legend rule his Beleren as he resolved that. From there, I was in complete control of the game state with removal, counterspells, and backup counterspells.
However, the game was far from over. In fact, we were simply moving on to another act. We both drew lands for about 10 turns, I couldn't find another threat besides Tar Pits, and my opponent had so much land removal that I couldn't possibly count on one of those to end the game. I needed either another Mind Sculptor or my second Sphinx. I had used the first Sphinx as a leverage tool to elevate myself from the Beleren lock in the early game, and I used that first Jace to effectively act as "Seal of Counter Target Jace." There were 3 more reliable threats left in my library: The other 2 Jaces and the other Jwar Isle. While I had played a full set of Ingenuities and 2-3 of my Preordains, I still couldn't find a Jace. I was down to less than 20 cards left in my library, and that natural endgame clock started to set in. And the worst part of this equation? I knew exactly where my last Sphinx was. On turn one, I had Preordained for land off of Darkslick Shores, and put a land on top and Jwar Isle on the bottom.
Fortunately, I found Jace #2 and got to work. I believe I brainstormed once or twice to secure the lead with a couple of hard counters and Doom Blades, and then I started +2ing my Jace on myself to scry into that Jwar Isle. I think a lot of players are addicted to Fatesealing their opponents, to the point where they don't understand that you can target yourself with Jace. I honestly didn't care what my opponent drew for the next 5 turns with what my hand contained...I just needed to end the game. I had such a small number of cards in my library, that if my opponent simply held onto a 7-card hand when I ultimated, I would actually deck before he would. I counted the cards in my library and estimated how often I had preordained cards below my Sphinx over 20 turns ago, and calculated that I would have at least enough turns to kill my opponent with 0-2 cards left in my library in that combat phase. I ended up ultimating Jace and then playing a Sphinx the next turn with 6 cards left in my library, and then I alternated scrying and fatesealing to stack my deck with counters on top and to run him out of potential outs. I had essentially known at 8 cards what my entire library looked like, from top to bottom, so I didn't even need Sphinx to remind me of my topdecks--but I looked anyway to be sure. I took my opponent down to -1 life with one card left in my library.
I was very happy that I remembered my High Tide skills in the first game. I am accustomed to playing Solidarity in Legacy, and from playing that deck I have developed the skill to remember cards on the bottom of the library due to effects like Opt, Impulse, and Peer through Depths. I have stacked my 20 card library in combo turns with a Flash of Insight from the Graveyard in order to play around multiple Emrakuls with Brain Freezes. Compared to those kinds of puzzles, to remember what I Preordain/Jace to the bottom, and subsequently what and where my outs are, is much simpler. Still, I felt like I was doing very well to be using library manipulation to its fullest while I was in such a sleep-deprived state, and that I had not gone on tilt from the nonsense in the beginning of round 6.
Still, we had another game to play, so I went back to business. In game 2, I remember having a stable land flow and my deck performing as it should. Neither of us mulliganed. I planned and stuck a Mind Sculptor, played around my opponent's known and unknown tricks using Duress, and ended the game at least 15 minutes before the round timer was up.
Do you know what the best part of this round was? Nick brought me a Triple Whopper from Burger King, and another energy drink from the van! It even came with french fries! Nick was the real champion for bringing me good food, that day.
Round 8: UWG Next Level Bant
I was paired up to someone with a 6-0-1 record and sat down at table one for the second time, that day. When my opponent sat down, I asked him if we should get a judge to discuss an intentional draw. He swiftly replied that he wanted to play so that his friend could have a shot of making it into top 8. I said, "Are you sure?" He was. So, on this day where I was essentially 7-0 and should have double-drawn, or at least drawn once, I would have to play again to make top 8. The next time your life becomes hard mode, just remember that playing through the pain can still lead to victory.
I lost the dice roll and knew that my opponent was playing some kind of Bant deck with the typical Fauna Shaman/Vengevine nonsense, Jaces, and Mana Leaks, so I was essentially playing against my known worst match-up. My opponent and I both kept 7 card hands, but his draw was slow to the point where his first play was a Sea Gate Oracle (which I allowed), and he didn't find a second green mana until he cast a turn 6 or 7 Birds of Paradise. He was running planeswalkers into counterspells because he had no choice, and when he finally had double Green I had 2 Mindbreak Traps for his pair of Vengevines. Then, I Tech Edged him down to 3 lands, Inquisitioned a Birds away, and then put a Jace on the table and unsummoned his resolved Birds. He hit my Jace with a Sea Gate Oracle to drive it from 2 down to 1 and then he resolved his Birds, but that didn't deter me from using my Jace to unsummon the Birds again, then cast another Jace and start brainstorming. He hit the Jace again and put his Birds back on the table, but this time I countered it. I proceeded to put a Jwar Isle on the table and brainstorm about 7 or 8 turns in a row with my 1 loyalty Jace. I wasn't in any rush to kill my opponent off without finding another Jwar Isle to totally lock the table up, so every turn I held back from attacking, he simultaneously grew more on tilt. Eventually, he conceded so we could play a second game with enough time for him to potentially win a third game.
I thought about offering him a draw again between games. I don't mind if someone elects to play to dreamcrush for a friend to make top 8; he has a right to do that if he wants. Either a draw or a win would have locked me for top 8. But, because he had such a terrible attitude during game one, I decided to keep my mouth shut. He was whining so much about the fact that I had a countermagic for his spells. I definitely drew nuts that game, but I still had to have the knowledge of the match-up in order to lock it up in the manner that I did. I have played hundreds of games in testing against every kind of Fauna Shaman deck imaginable, and I knew that I would win the game by denying my opponent's resources and locking the table up with a Jwar Isle. He could have mulliganed his hand for one with a turn 2 Shaman or turn 1 Birds, and maybe made the game a little harder for me. I sideboarded heavily to bring in Grave Titans, Consume the Meeks, Smothers, and I think one Disfigure for Negates, an Inquisition, and Roils, and even took out a Cancel or 2. I had Consume the Meek in the board to handle random weenie decks and my typical sideboard plan for Fauna Shaman does not normally involve the card, but I estimated that it would provide an enormous blowout in game 2, so I brought them in. Plus, it has a picture of a Mothership on it! How can that be wrong?
We both kept 7 cards again in game 2, and once again I allowed a turn Sea Gate Oracle to resolve and hit me 5 times. My opponent kept trying to resolve expensive planeswalkers and not have his Fauna Shamans destroyed, but failed miserably. He finally decided to animate his Colonnade and attack me with it and his Sea Gate Oracle. He had a Birds and a Wall of Omens on the table as well, so in the beginning of combat I casted a Consume the Meek and got a 4-for-1. Well, it was really just a glorified 2-for-1 because Wall of Omens is literally blank against me (aside from aiding free Mindbreak Traps sometimes) and Sea Gate Oracle is an irrelevant body attached to a Sleight of Hand, but it was still fun to watch him sigh and put 4 cards into the trash can. From there, I resolved 3 Jace's Ingenuities and...then I drew a lot of land. In fact, we both drew a lot of land. Neither of us did much of anything over the course of at least 10 turns. He played the occasional spell, and I would answer it without losing card parity. It came to a point where I actually used all four Tectonic Edges on my opponent's end step to kill all four of his nonbasic lands, taking him entirely off of white mana. Ultimately, I had drawn way more cards than him, and I run Preordain as opposed to Wall of Omens and Sea Gate Oracle, so I topdecked out of the situation first. I drew a Jace and Brainstormed, and he drew a Jace and legened them out. Then I played another Jace and brainstormed into 2 Jwar Isles and a Grave Titan, so I ran that Jwar Isle into an obvious Mana Leak to get rid of it and then next turn played the other Jwar Isle with tons of mana open and a Jace still on the table. The following turn, I rolled Grave Titan out there with 5 mana open for 2 counters and hit my opponent down to 11 life (he had used all four of his Misty Rainforests that game). My opponent played a bunch of cheap creauture to try to clog the board up and buy himself a turn, and then on my turn I played a Consume the Meek to kill all of them and swing for his life total.
So after 8 rounds of swiss, 2 of which I shouldn't have had to play at all, I had lost just one game due to having Doom Blades against black creatures. I was second seed going into top 8, and ready to continue the steamrolling. I killed my energy drink, went to the bathroom, and sat down at the table.
Quarterfinals: Mono Black Mimic Vat Control
My opponent won the dice roll and elected to play first, for obvious reasons. He kept his 7 card hand. I remember sitting next to him in an early round and seeing that his deck was some sort of mono-black deck with Hexmages, so although my hand had enough lands and spells to normally be solid, it also had 2 Doom Blades in it. It was also a little slow. I tried to ship it back for a hand with more suitable answers, and my 6 card hand showed me two more doom blades. However, the rest of the hand was a solid 4-carder with 2 Darkslick Shores, a Mana Leak, and a Preordain. I figured that I could at least brainstorm away the Doom Blades, upon drawing a Jace, so it was an acceptable keep.
On turn 1, my opponent played a Swamp and Duressed me. He saw the hand and we both had a good laugh over it, and then he took my Mana Leak. Personally, I think he should have taken the Preordain and let me have what was functionally a 3-card hand with one counterspell, but perhaps he didn't understand the power level of Preordain. On my turn, I Preordained, and then on his second turn he played a Hexmage. The following turn, I Preordained again and played a Tar Pit. A few turns later, we came to a point where I was down to 12 life and I had drawn out of the nonsense. I played a Jace, brainstormed, chuckled, and said, "Now I can finally put these two Doom Blades on top!" There was a hearty laugh from my opponent, the crowd, and even a couple of the judges. I practically tried to put the Doom Blades on top of my library before even drawing 3 cards. On the next turn, I had 2 mana open for my opponent, who hit me down to 10 with his Hexmage. In his second main phase, he played a Skinrender with 2 lands open. I could have Leaked it, but I figured I would let him have his Hill Giant for a brief moment. He put it on the table, targeted his Hexmage, and cracked that in response targetting my Jace. It was a smart play, but on the next turn I simply played another Jace and unsummoned his Skinrender. He played some things into countermagic, and a turn or two later, I Inquisitioned him and saw another Skinrender as the last card in his hand. Eventually, I put a Sphinx on the table, and then started beating him for 8 a turn with that and a Tar Pit. When he was at 6 life, he played a Sign in Blood to find some answers, and I let it resolve. He had no outs to the Sphinx.
In game 2, I added Smothers and Disfigures for the Doom Blades, which I couldn't wait to take out. I also brought in 2 Duresses for 2 of the Inquisitions, since that would give me better tools for answering expensive black cards like planeswalkers and Mind Sludge. Neither of us took a mulligan, and my opponent opened with a manly turn 2 Nantuko Shade. Unfortunately for him, he had no more lands in hand and no Sign in Blood to draw for more gas, so he hit me a couple of times for 4. I didn't have an answer to the shade yet, but I preordained on turn 3 and found myself an Into the Roil to go along with a Mana Leak already in hand. On his fifth turn, I had four mana open when he attacked with his shade. I declared no blockers, and then he pumped it to a 4/3 again, still on two lands. I bounced it and drew a card and took no damage. I was actually was content to just take the damage and bounce it later, keeping Leak open...but he tapped out all the way and made a mid-combat bounce with kicker possible. After that, I drew a ton of cards with 3 Ingenuities and he never really did anything productive, although he did hit his land drops shortly after his shade was bounced and subsequently countered.
Semifinals: RG Valakut Titan
I won the dice roll and we kept our openers, but my opponent had a god draw involving turn 2 ramp, turn 3 Expedition (which I countered), turn 4 Expedition (which I also countered), land, and Cultivate. He was up a card already, and then when I countered his Titan he had a pair of summoning traps. Fine, I thought. You can have your Titan+double trap on turn 4 against me in game 2, and I'll be ready with my Duresses and Flashfreezes. I sideboarded out 2 Roils, 1 Inquisition, and 2 Doom Blades for the 2 Duresses and 3 Flashfreezes.
In game 2, my opponent had to mulligan down to 6, but proved that he was man enough to go on the man plan, as his first business play was an Obstinate Baloth. I had boarded out most of my removal, but happened to have no counterspell in hand, so I let it resolved. I let it hit me 3 times, then unsummoned it with a Jace. He resolved it again and went to 28, as I wasn't willing to Leak it and walk into a Trap without another counterspell. On my next turn, I simply unsummoned it again. The third time he tried to resolve it, I countered it. After that, I drew enough cards to make the game academic. He tried putting Valakuts on the table to burn me with mountains, but I kept Edging them. Eventually, I played a Jwar Isle, then hit him to 23 and played another, then animated a Tar Pit and hit him down to 10. He played a Titan and I let it resolve because I had already destroyed 3 of his Valakuts that game, so he got his last volcano and one mountain and hit me for 3, putting me at 5 life. I was anticipating him playing one more land and taking me to 2, but he didn't even have that. I was sitting on a couple of counterspells anyways, so there were literally no outs for him after the Titan. On my turn, he was at 10 life while facing down both Sphinxes.
Before the next game, I brought 2 of the Doom Blades back in for the last 2 Inquisitions. Doom Blade is a good answer against the Valakut deck, but I typically take 2-3 for game 2 because they don't often man-plan it against control. Most control decks don't have the muscle to handle Summoning Trap and Ricochet Trap in a Titan-induced counter war, so the ramp decks just focus more on getting to 6 mana quickly and playing threat after threat until something sticks and rapes the control deck. I think my opponent was smart for bringing in more beats against a really permission-heavy deck with Duress effects, but that plan didn't finish me off and in game 3 I was going to have more than one Doom Blade in my deck again.
In game 3, he mulliganed down to 6 again while I was on the draw with a comfortable 7. At some point during the early- to mid-game struggle, my opponent made a potentially critical error. He had an Oracle, some lands, and a Khalni Heart Expedition on the table. He played a spell before playing a land off of the top of his library, and I doom bladed his Oracle in response. He then proceeded to have a dead Expedition stuck on the table for a turn, when he could have immediately been up 3 cards.
Later on in the game, my opponent resolved an Oracle, and on the following turn I played a Jace and unsummoned it, somewhat crossing my fingers. The next turn, he played a Baloth instead, to my puzzlement. I don't remember his draw steps exactly, but I think he probably would have drawn at least 1 card off the top of his library, if not 2, had he just replayed the Oracle. I guess he just wanted a bigger threat on the table, but I don't understand the logic in not trying to go for easy card advantage in a situation where beatdown is clearly going to fail. Either way, I played it safe and basically just brainstormed for a million turns, playing out a ton of lands and Edging his Valakuts.
Eventually, I Duressed him and Fatesealed him, and he had to play his threats out. He had nothing but a Mountain in hand, so I just hit him with 2 Tar Pits, pushing him to 18. On his turn, he topdecked an Evolving Wilds (as I had seen with Jace), and put it on the table to deter me from fatesealing him out again. I still did it anyways, and left another Evolving Wilds on top. I swung with 3 Tar Pits this turn, tapping out. I happened to have a Doom Blade and literally 6 counterspells in hand, but I did the math and realized he had absolutely no outs if I just bashed as hard as possible. He had to crack the Wilds to draw something else, and then he only had a Mountain and one other card from his deck in hand. I was at 20 life still, so if he drew a Titan, the best action would be 2 Valakuts and a land drop or Valakut+Mountain and then land drop, which only does 6 to me. He needed some kind of fetchland and Valakut at the same time to deal with even one Tar Pit and go from 9 to 3 as opposed to 9 to dead on the next attack, and a Titan can't tutor up untapped fetchlands to do just that. An oracle could, but he had to hit those exact sequence of plays, and then next turn I would still be able to just Tech Edge the Valakut, know what his topdeck was from Oracle, bounce the oracle, hit him for 6, have him at 3, and counter anything he played. If he drew an Avenger or most any other creature, I would just swing through it with ultra-evasive Tar Pits. If he had a Baloth or Pelakka Wurm, I could just use 1-2 Tar Pits and have my Jace bounce it and then counter it. If it was a Terastodon, there was no combination that would solve the board; I had all 4 Tar Pits ready to roll out like siege tanks. So I had the pleasure of doming my opponent twice in a row with 3 Tar Pits at once, tapping out a whole 12 lands while holding a hand full of countermagic. We shook hands, and I was off to the finals.
Finals: RG Valakut Titan...again.
This time I lost the dice roll. My opponent thought very carefully about his hand, so I figured he either was seriously mana screwed or he was holding a land-heavy draw with little to no ramp spells. He kept his hand, and I decided to keep my 4 lander with no permission because it had an Into the Roil and 2 Jaces, and big potential to just proactively take the game. This may have been a mistake, but I actually did draw 2 counterspells by the time he casted his turn 6 Titan. Still, I didn't draw enough permission to stop 3 Titans, and I had to deal with the Titan with removal after taking a bunch of damage. A pair of Valakuts pushed me down to 2 life before I finally killed them off with Tectonic Edges. My opponent had nothing but lands on the table, so when I Inquisitioned him, saw a Mountain as his last card, and I had just a Sphinx in hand, so I decided to roll the Sphinx out and cross my fingers. He played the mountain, and then played the topdecked card: an Avenger of Zendikar. I should have just died if he had taken 5 seconds to rearrange the order of operations and play his guy first before playing the land, which would have made 7 creatures with a power value instead of 8 creatures with no power value. However, he didn't make the obvious play, so I had something of a chance. I topdecked another Sphinx and hit him for 5 before playing my second Sphinx. I had such a low number of outs, it was time to be as aggressive as possible. On his turn, he attacked and I blocked, and then he played another Avenger off the top. I swung and left a Tar Pit up to chump block, and had a Cancel for his topdecked spell. Then, I swung him down to 5 with the Sphinx and had another Tar Pit open, but he drew a land and made his zillion plant tokens relevant, so I died.
In sideboarding, I swapped 2 Roils, 2 Doom Blades, and 1 Inquisition for 2 Duresses and 3 Flashfreezes.
Game 2 was a total blow-out. I changed my mind on the end of his second turn and decided not to play control anymore, and decided to instead play land destruction. I countered multiple ramp spells, Doom Bladed an Overgrown Battlement, and stopped him from Exploring. He stuck on 3 lands for a turn, then played Valakut as his 4th land. I Wastelanded it, and then he played another one. I wastelanded that too, sat on 5 lands for 2 turns, and then when I got to 6 mana I played a huge flier. He was only on 4 lands, and I beat his face in with countermagic back-up while he tried to put some lands on the table so he could start casting spells.
In game 3, I was starting to really lose my mind. I had already felt the effects of my energy drink wear off by the beginning of the match, but by game 3 I was basically playing on auto-pilot. Fortunately for me, auto-pilot involved never, ever tapping out and trying to play around more spells than my opponent realistically can have. So we played a match that was 8 turns longer than it should have been because I refused to play a Sphinx out of unwarranted fear. I drew at least half of my deck while my opponent sat on essentially nothing, as he was unable to use Summoning Trap+Titan trickery to break through a countermagic shield. Finally, I played a Duress effect, saw that I was actually very safe from all of his topdecks, and played a Sphinx with Flashfreeze back-up. The game finally came to a close, and I was the state champion!
After the tournament, we went to the Cheesecake Factory, and I rewarded myself with three Long Islands and a big slice of Cheesecake. We had a great time, and were glad that we took the drive north in the middle of Friday night, iron-manning it instead of staying the night in a hotel. When we left the restaurant and got the van back on the 5 freeway, I was in a euphoric state of mind. After being awake for over 36 hours and working my brain like a slave, I slept for the long drive home.
Also Mindbreak trap, why not just more cancel, negate, or stoic rebuttal?
Daretti
Ezuri
Captain Sisay (In work)