MTG Salvation

I guess I'm just getting to used to splashing for Disenchant. At states here, a friend of mine playing monored Gargadon/Gobbos got wrecked by two different opponents playing 4 maindeck Story Circle. I guess Pithing Needle would achieve the same result, though.

Check the updated decklist at the top, I also added the newly spoiled Warrior Equipment, because every creature in the deck besides Gargamel and the Fanatic are Warriors. Any Keldon Marauders played after the equipment gets haste.

For Reference:

There already are 4 rift bolts.

Here's a [MOR] aggro deck I threw together a few minutes ago, and it seems to be goldfishing nicely.



Gotta run to work, but I'll toss out a few card explanations quick.

Creature Choices: I love Fanatic//Marauders as a One-Two punch in red aggro. Brion's a nice beater. Thundercloud Shaman clears the way nicely for the Countryside Crusher and Brion to swing since none of these creatures have evasion.

Burn Suite: It's all cheap burn and it all does 3 points. Great way to burn out the opponent.

Sideboard: Disenchant will ensure that nothing stops the Crusher unless its straight-up creature kill. No O-Ring and no Lignify/Pacifism. Boom//Bust is a great way to stall out a control deck, and it pumps up the Crusher 10-fold. Threaten has always treated me well, especially if you side in the Gargadon as a way to get rid of problem creatures. Regenerators on your opponents side? Threaten and Garg-snack the damn thing. Gargadon is a great winCon if you see a lot of spot removal game one. He also can sac all your lands and swing in tandem with your newly bulked Crusher.

Discuss and leave me good stuff to talk about when I get back!

Actually, I've always called Teferi, Swatch.
Example. "I'm gonna drop the swatch."
Idea: Cause when Teferi's on my board, I DECIDE what time it is.

The Eel/Beautiful Freak - Shriekmaw, beautiful freak is a
play on the only semi-popular single/CD by a band called the Eels
Flying Fish - Mulldrifter
Fishsticks - Any deck I make that involves Momentary Blink and Mulldrifter, a la my Top 8 South Dakota States deck.

Anyone else realize that this also will let you use Peppersmoke, Giant's Ire, Aquitect's Will, Rootgrapple, Surge of Thoughtweft, etc. and draw a card.

Really? Everyone thinks that Supreme Exemplar is that bad? First thing I thought of was adding it to my Mannequin deck. EoT 10/10 flyer can be a nasty surprise.

For some reason the little sparks/meteorites falling down along with the similarity to Orim makes me think of Orim's Thunder. What if it was a PW with an Orim's Thunder ability. Could we say savage board techZnorZ?

I had a deck that I played with the following, and it worked great.

Does Shriekmaw's evoke cost get a mana reduction from Stormscape Familiar? I was trying to solve this conundrum in the Comprehensive Rules Guide on the DCI website, but I couldn't glean an acceptable answer. I realize that evoke is indeed playing the card, but I want to be absolutely sure that this works before I go abusing it.

Would Tarmogoyf really be a stretch, though? We all know its OP, but seriously...it would be a pefect fit for a graveyard-based set. Goyfs in general are a good fit for graveyard-based sets.

I've been mulling over the results of States a lot since last Saturday, and it's fairly obvious that the rotation didn't do much to U/B other than change its faces. In my own States I top 8'ed with a U/B aggro-control deck splashing W for Momentary blink along with a U/B Faerie deck taking 1st. Now look at all the States lists. U/B Mannequin, the neo Teachings decks, and all the Faerie decks. U/B threw a lot of punches at States and still seems like the color combination to beat. What do you think? Sound off here.

Quote from daivos

This doesn't take into account the strength of each tournament. States such as New Jersey, Virginia, California, etc. are going to have a far more competitve meta game than say...North Dakota.

Actually, my friend, you are probably mistaken here. I played in South Dakota and top 8'ed with a U/b/w Blink deck I've been testing since Shriekmaw was spoiled. We only had 51 players, but what you don't realize is we still have a lot of players here with high ratings. Some of us do play at nationals and place highly in regionals. Fewer players doesn't mean worse players, by any means. What is different, however, is we have a lot less players to test against. Our FNM meta is the most rediculous meta ever. I usually just play rogue jank at FNM, because using strong decks would be overkill.

I also refuse to ever net deck, but most of the players here that do well, are net deckers. You know, to each his own, but net decking kills the fun for me. We still play well, we just have a different MtG universe than large metropolises. (?sp-checker likes that word?)

I played a homebrew U/b/w Blink deck to a top 8 at States. My decklist is under South Dakota's top 8 if you wanna go look at it on Wiz.com/magic; but the point is that I had four Rune Snag, four Cryptic Command, three Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir, and two Venser, Shaper Savant.

I played against a ton of Eyes of the Wisent, as people for some reason assumed that:

1) It really mattered if I played stuff on their turn.
2) I had more instants than that.


Seriously, against my deck it was totally useless. Sometimes I would play an EoT Venser, then when he came into play his ability would bounce the token he just made. Then I could Blink him to get rid of what I wanted. Secondly, most control players have an array of Shriekmaw these days. I made three Eyes tokens in one turn against a player by flashing Teferi, Venser and evoking a Mulldrifter. Then on my turn I shrieked all three tokens with Shriekmaw and two Blinks.

All Eyes really does is make sure the opponent piloting the blue deck knows how to play control. If you counter only what NEEDS to be countered, you'll be fine. If you're one of those r-tards that plays twenty-four counters and just counters everything every turn until you out of mana, then you'll lose.

Quote from schrecklich

What State/Region/Province, PhyreMynd?

South Dakota States, for Regionals I have to go Nebraska for the Plains Regionals, which I got top 8 at last year.

The comments part was strickly my opinion, so you're entitled to your own. The comment about control not being dead was referring to the two U/W control decks in my top 8, as well as my deck being pretty much control.

Here's my deck. I made top 8 and got 5th overall. I love Shriekmaw, and as soon as we had seen the card, I had made a deck for it. When Mulldrifter came along, it pulled the deck into blue. This is what I came up with. I call it Shriek and Drift.



My deck is very capable of drawing half the library or more every game. It can and does comeback from the most frightening deficits, time and time again.

If you haven't tried Fathom Trawl, you have to. It's awesome. A few times, I had three business cards sandwiched amongst seven or eight land.

I thought Jace Beleren was alright, thinking most of the Planeswalkers to be utter trash, but Jace changed my mind. He's a house. Glad I couldn't find my other Fathom Trawl and had to throw him in.

Tournament

Round 1: B/r Goblins. This was my brother's roomate in college. He mulled to four cards game 1, and I tore him apart. Game 2, he drew very well, and got me down to one life with a Keldon Megaliths. After he used it at the end of my turn, I played Venser to bounce it. At EoT on his turn, I played Teferi and Tombstalker. I attacked for ten dropping him to eight on my turn. Then I Blink'ed Venser to bounce his Megaliths again. He played an Incinerate on his turn and I Snagg'ed it for six. I attacked for ten on my turn and won.

Round 2: G/B Rock. I played against a friend of mine playing G/B Rock. His deck can't do much against mine, we playtested it a lot already. I had many ways to kill his green creatures, and discard doesn't hurt my deck much. Once I start Blinking Mulldrifter for a few turns I can draw over half my library. In game two, at the end of his turn I dropped a Teferi. Then I evoked a Shriekmaw and Blink'ed it to kill his two CotH tokens. Still on his EoT, I delved a Tombstalker. Good game.

Round 3: Sadin R/G. Game 1 I know I got torn apart by Garruk tokens. I killed the first Garruk, countered/killed a few Goofys and some Trolls, but another Garruk ended up pumping out about six tokens. I got him to three, but in the end I was dead. Something of note, I killed his first Garruk with Shriekmaw, as tokens cannot block it. Game 2, my opening hand had a Pithing Needle, and I drew one on turn two. So I locked out Garruk and the Village People on turn two. I eventually had an EoT Teferi and he quickly succumbed to the Beast that Cost the Least, (BCL). Game 3, I deathmarked three Tarmogoyfs and Commanded two Trolls. I locked out his Village again, and Snagg'ed a Garruk. I Damn'ed a third Troll, but having drawn almost nothing but creature kill, after dropping him to nine, I was slain by the fourth Troll Ascetic. A little secret here: Four Trolls in the first 10 turns of a game, are brutal. Good games, either way. This match was actually pretty fun.

Round 4: U/W Control. Net decks are always tuned very well. The problem was, this particular player was an awful control player. He was used to beating down people with mono green, but someone told him it was a good idea to play U/W today. I mean don't get me wrong, he did do reasonably well, going 2-1 to be paired up with me. When he faced me however, it was plain to see that he could never out-control me. Two blue based control decks usually come close to time when two good players are piloting the decks. I, however, took this match in under fifteen minutes. He countered everything I bait'ed him to counter. It was a walk in the park, I pretended certain chaff spells were important to my development by feigning mana counting and deep though before I would play them, and without fail they were countered. Nothing noteworthy here, so we'll just move on.

Round 5: G/W Dourbark/Garruk Aggro-Control. Interesting deck. It was 3-1 at this point. Apparently everyone had been having a rough time dealing with it. My deck made short work of it, though, having so many ways to destroy creatures. His deck was actually fairly solid, but being as they were all heavy-mana fatties, I had plenty of time to draw all the creature kill I needed. During Game 2, there was a moment that had me at under ten life with lethal on the table. I had a table full of mana, however, and drew what I needed: a Mulldrifter. I evoked the Mulldrifter, Blink'ed it, drew two Shriekmaw, a Rune Snag and a Venser. I played Venser, bouncing his Timber Protector, evoked Shriekmaw and Blink'ed it killing two Dourbark, played the Shriekmaw through evoke, and flashbacked one of the Blinks killing two Garruk Tokens. With two Gemstone Mines open for mana, I passed the turn. He tries for Timber Protector again, I Snag it for six. He swings with two Villages, dropping me to three and then passes the turn. I swing and drop him to ten. He activates the Villages and smiles, then he frowns when I flashback a Blink targeting Venser to bounce one of the Villages, and casting Teferi to block the other one.:D

Round 6: B/G Tarmorack. This is a friend of mine, and one of my playtesting partners. We're both 4-1, so we ID and break into top 8.


Top 8

Round 1, Top 8: U/W Control. I lost both games fairly quickly. I know this guy fairly well, because he plays FNM in our area. I'm not discrediting his ability as a player at all, and I'm not making excuses; but I honestly got land screwed. I mulled to six, to keep Secluded Glen, Urborg, two Mulldrifters, Sudden Death and a Venser. My next two land draws were both Urborg, and he hadn't missed a land drop. A few turns later, Aeon Chronicler started smashing face, and I threw in the towel. Game 2, my opening hand was Secluded Glen, Island, Island, Urza's Factory, Rune Snag, Cryptic Command, and Shriekmaw. My next few draws were Damnation, Sudden Death, Sudden Death, Fathom Trawl, and Damnation. With no double black coming anytime soon, I shake his hand and pack'em-up.

My top 8 included:
1st Place: Dan Schmidt - U/B Faeries, great guy, nice build. Very happy for Dan.
2nd Place: Solomon Carlson - U/W Control, he's kinda my arch-nemesis.
3-8th*
U/W Control
Mono Green Aggro
UBw Blink --> Me
Sadin R/G --> The guy that beat me in Swiss.
B/G Tarmorack --> David Ferrick, the guy I ID'ed with in Round 6.
U/B Teachings --> This guy must not have ever really played this deck before. He made a few interesting play mistakes that display a lack of understanding of the deck in general.

*In no particular order, because I only checked my standing.


Other Random Comments:

1. Control is not dead.
2. People that play decks they're not used to, will lose.
3. Rogue Decks are fun.
4. CiPT lands are perfectly fine without tribal cards in this meta.
5. From what I've seen Chandra and Liliana Vess just plain suck.
6. Everybody plays green. Except the players that beat them.
7. Lorwyn will be more fun that I previously had expected.
8. Don't discount anything, even Giants and Treefolk.
9. Mulldrifter is broken.
10. Foil Doran is pretty, but the top 8 playmat is very ugly.

Sorry for the long post, I just wanted to share my experience. States was fun this year.

Thanks for reading
- phyremynd