I thought it was going to be a good Magic weekend. I then went 1-2-1 with my BUG pod deck. My draws were clunky and my sideboard was inadequate. I don't want to get into details. The pain is too fresh in my mind. (Go ahead and call the waaahmbulance for me. If you don't think I need it, just keep reading.)
I decide to not play in our second FNM. Instead, I grab my post-rotation UB deck and pick up some games against BUG Pod, Cawblade, and a random mono green deck with Garruks, Thruns, Asceticism, Beast Within, and Obstinate Baloth. Oddly, there are no Dungrove Elders in the green deck. I manage to ult Lili a few times and win at least one game against each deck, but I mostly just lost.
Vs Caw, Manlands and Beleren kill or counter Lili.
Vs Pod, a resolved Pod means I have about a 2% of winning that game.
Vs the green deck, Lili's +1 is suicide agaist Obstinate Baloth.
The deck needs a bit more draw and a better midgame plan for when I don't draw Liliana. I'm hoping for some helpful spoilers this week.
Grumble grumble...
In my last blog, I posted a self-mill deck. I only promised that I would test it and that the deck was neat. I tried the deck, an the deck was neat, but by neat I mean bad.
Ugh.
Saturday morning, I show up early for the free packmastering. There are free T-shirts with the purchase of a Deckbuilder's Toolkit. Two of my friends went for the offer and I joined in because we had a plan. We were going to build 60-card decks from our toolkits and play for ante -- two sideboard cards and one maindeck card per game, with basic lands not allowed as ante. Each player is also allowed to name one card in their kit that is not allowed for ante, so you don't have to worry about losing your best card. You basically play until one person has acquired a deck strong enough to steamroll everyone else into submission. Personally, I'd recommend five sideboard and one maindeck card ante per game so the environment is more dynamic.
Wow. That was a big paragraph with no whining.
Can't let that happen again.
Packmastering was blah. It has some novelty value, but one pack will have ten creatures and two pieces of spot removal and the next pack will have five creatures and a bunch of WoTC's "skill testing" pieces of trash.
Yes. I'm being bitter about a free event with free boosters.
Once the event winds down, I get back to Toolkit Wars. I'm pretty confident about my deck. It's RU with draw, burn, and theft. Unfortunately, my opponent has me matched in draw and removal and I'm outclassed in creatures. Our games are drawn out and slow, and I'm probably losing about 2/3 of them. I really started to feel like yesterday's news when I had to face down a Mnemonic Wall-Quicksilver Geyser-Kor Skyfisher-Rise from the Grave inevitability engine.
Wah.
The best part about Saturday was probably "Dan vs." He was mad at art this week. I need a "JERK" T-shirt.
Mirror-Mad Phantasm was spoiled recently, and I formed a plan.
1. Play the Phantasm
2. ?
3. Profit!
I didn't know what phase two would be, but I assumed it would include Birthing Pod. By podding into it, you can run just one copy of the Phantasm to maximize the self-mill. Pod also leaves mana up for activating the Phantasm once it enters the battlefield. Even better, activating a copy of the Phantasm with none left in the library is complete self-mill.
The game plan is to protect a Maniac, Pod into a Phantasm, Mirror Image it, activate the copy, and then Ponder or Probe for the win. The backup plan is to make some big Boneyard Wurms.
It sounds complicated. It is. Mirror-Mania might just turn out to be a joke deck. I just want to toss this first run out there. I'm not claiming anything about this deck except that I think it's neat, and I'm going to be testing it before my weekend update.
Noxious Revival serves as a tutor with a large graveyard and can buy you a turn if you've milled yourself completely and lost your maniac. Two will keep you going until something besides an empty library kills you.
If either of the combo creatures die, Mimic Vat can be a superstar.
The deck may need removal, stronger countermagic, or even more "Plan B" support. It may even need to be thrown out as a bad idea. I'll know more after I've shuffled it up and played.
In my last blog post, I had assembled a Liliana-Smallpox deck. It featured Garruk Relentless and Liliana of the Veil. I had won a majority of the games I had played with it and I came out still liking both walkers. That was only about ten games.
Sunday night, I had a 5 hour testing session with two other players. I was ready with Lili Pox, so I waited a bit for someone to come up with their Scars-Inn prelim deck. First up was a RB deck.
I picked off a few games here and there when I'd have multiple Smallpox and a Liliana of the Veil, but for the most part, my removal would just make it so I would die on turn twelve instead of five.
Next up was a first draft post-rotaion Tezz Pod.
We only played 4-5 games, and my Poxes and Planeswalkers were showing up to murder hands and manabases with enough Despises to keep early Tezzerets away. I did lose a longer game due mostly to my own Beast tokens, and I scooped another game with a mulligan into mana screw.
I played another couple games vs BR and came to the conclusion Green was not going to get me there. Also, I was losing faith in Smallpox, but I decided to not give it up yet. I let Tezz and BR duke it out while I moved the deck to UB. I liked the added consistency of Ponder and the graveyard use provided by Snapcaster Mage and Silent Departure.
It's pretty obvious this next list is lacking finishers. Sometimes when I'm building decks, I'll go ahead and just leave a gaping hole in one so the deck can "tell me" what it wants.
I played a few games against both decks and the deck "told" me that it would be better to forget Smallpox and put some finishers in.
With -1 Perilous Myr, -1 Phantasmal Image, -4 Smallpox, +1 Bloodgift Demon, +1 Sorin Markov, +2 Wurmcoil Engine, +2 Entomber Exarch, I ended up with what I felt after testing was the best build of the night.
It's a work in progress. It can't deal with noncreature permanents short of Lili's ult, and there's lot of room to play with just about everything.
Yes, Snapcaster is crazy.
Stacking with Ponder so the Satchel hits a land is good stuff.
Liliana was played as a +1 machine most of the time, even when my opponent's hand was empty and I was holding something like a Dismember. I used her ultimate a lot -- probably just as often as her -2. Ponder and the Satchel were great for letting me see into the future so I could make the best choices with Lili and set up my draws so they woud flow better with her +1.
I'll probably have done more testing and built at least one more deck from ISD spoilers by Saturday night when I plan to blog again.
Let's get this out of the way: BUG Pod went 2-1 to finish second of eight players. The loss was to Valakut 1-2.
Trial of the Planeswalkers
I tossed Liliana into my BUG Pod to get a feel for her. I was playing against Jund Pod. I think I only played one game. Liliana does not like Perilous Myr. I drew poorly and lost. After stopping early with the Lili test, I skipped trying Garruk in the deck at all.
I went straight to building UB with Liliana. Ponders, Azure Mages, Dismembers, Frost Titans...why not? The deck needed tuning and I think went 2-3 or 3-3 against a GRW Zoo-style deck with Goblin Guides, Blade Splicers, Mirran Crusaders, Hero of Oxid Ridge, and burn. I forget what the green was for. Against the swarms, Liliana could rarely protect herself, but it felt like the deck was letting her down - not vice versa. After I took the deck apart, I saw Snapcaster Mage had been spoiled. That card makes me want to try UB Lili again.
The next deck I built was designed with her in mind, but it was thrown together without any deep thinking.
This deck annihilates its own hand pretty easily. It throws card advantage out the window. The idea is to blow up lands and hands no matter what the cost. I played it against Jund Pod and won all three (or four?) games we played. It just came down to me swinging with Whatever random beaters after Poxes, Beast Within, and Lili's ult (I think I pulled it off twice) left my opponent with next to nothing on the table.
I then took up an offer to play against Twin. We played between 4-6 games and it came out close to even. Emptying hands and my massive amount of removal made it hard for him to go off, but his Lightning Bolts went a long way towards stopping the six creatures in my deck.
Against both opponents, Garruk Relentless would show up here and there and was amazing as a grinder-finisher.
All in all, it was about ten games of testing and I have to say neither planeswalker dissappointed yet. I should be having a test session running from Sunday night to Monday Morning. If I do, I should have feedback from playtesting even more spoiled cards and some more relavent results from post-rotation vs post-rotation games.
It's been almost three weeks since my last blog, but not much has happened. I went BUG Pog for two small FNM's and 3-0'd both of them. Yawn. I'm no longer excited about my deck. I may not even play FNM tonight. It just feels like the deck is due for failure.
Maybe tonight I'll just go to play some Commander on the side, but I'm kinda getting bored with Damia. Green ramp and recursion, blue extra turns, and black tutoring has proven too good in our Commander group. Winning gets old when you (correctly or not) assess your opponents to be helpless. (Yeah, that doesn't sound arrogant)
Now that ISD versions of Garruk and Liliana have been spoiled, I'm going to throw some proxies together and start trying them in decks. While it's easy to take a look at the cards and give a "best guess" of how good they are, it's best to just test them firsthand.
That's my goal for the weekend - test the new PWs. With Lili already being $35 at SCG and Garruk Likely to be more expensive, I want to have firsthand experience with each so I know whether I should trade for them or trade any I open away.
On first glance, I really like Liliana. She's a resource limiting card. I would like to build a deck that will want to +1 every turn. For now, I want to try a discard-aggro or "handless control" deck. I haven't thought about what could go in a handless control deck (in standard, anyway), but the idea seems neat. She seems like a card I'd want to stick on turn 3 every game, so my first shot at a deck would run Ponders and be UB.
Garruk seems frail, but he gives you all kinds of free tokens in either form, and can kill small creatures or tutor for big ones, depending on form. I like Garruk's versatility.
I'll try both, one at a time, in my current Pod deck. Even though I have Zen block cards in it, it's an easy way to get a feel for them.
Next, I'll probably try UBg deck with both in it.
After that, I would hope to have a good experience-based sense of direction to go with each.
I hope to have something worth reporting by the end of the weekend.
Game Day Came and went. I switched in Inferno Titan and Rune-Scarred Demon and took out Brutalizer Exarch and Sheoldred. I liked the changes for today.
I thought we were playing a top eight, so I intentionally drew vs. UB, even though I've yet to lose a round to UB. (I keep a pretty detailed matchup history on my PC.)
With my obsession with pod, I'm spending a lot of time in the Pod deck thread. They have all types in the same thread, so the discussion is all over the place. RUG and Bant seem to be the most popular flavors. As a Jund Pod fan, it bums me out a little that my choice of deck gets so little attention.
I feel this is a much tighter deck than what I was playing Two months ago. The potential Changes I have in mind for now are adding an Inferno Titan and switching Sheoldred out for a Rune-Scarred Demon.
I lent my deck to a friend who went out of town, and he won't be back until next week. I may be able to borrow a copy of my deck tomorrow to play at Gameday. I hope that happens. I won the New Phyrexia gameday with Jund Pod, and I'd like to try again.