Outside Information - PTQ Vegas

The last of this summers PTQ's on this side of the Mississippi have come to an end, and while none of us Q'd, we all came closer than we have in a long time. See, before this standard season, I was the last person to top 8 a PTQ in December of 2008 for sealed. Until three weeks ago when Charley made top 8 with Time Sieve, none of us had broken into another top 8, and were at the tail end of the standard season for 2010. That's over a year and a half. We had some major incentives to do well, and I know that they drove me to do better, and as a whole we all did. At the end of the day, we put three players into the top 16; Alex into the top 8 with Time Sieve, Matt Bartimus landed 13th with his own designed UW control (no elspeth/guideon/main DOJ/Baneslayers, so yes it was his own build) and I landed exactly on 16th playing RGU Destructive Force. Matt and I both went 6-2, and extending further down the bracket you had Charley and Seth who both finished at 5-3. Heres the list that I used:

Lands
5 [M11] Island
3 [ZEN] Scalding Tarn
3 [WWK] Raging Ravine
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
5 [M11] Forest
4 [M11] Mountain
1 [M11] Rootbound Crag

Creatures
4 [M11] Inferno Titan

Spells
4 [M11] Mana Leak
4 [M10] Garruk Wildspeaker
4 [WWK] Jace, the Mind Sculptor
3 [M11] Destructive Force
4 [M11] Cultivate
4 [M10] Rampant Growth
2 [M11] Chandra Nalaar
3 [ZEN] Into the Roil
3 [M10] Lightning Bolt

Sideboard
4 [ROE] Overgrown Battlement
3 [ROE] Pelakka Wurm
2 [M11] Flashfreeze
4 [ZEN] Goblin Ruinblaster
2 [M11] Pyroclasm

Remember how Strider posted his picks per color? I agree with most of them. Ya know what was scarily consistent? A ramp spell on turn 2 or 3, a Garruk after that, untap and cast destructive force, untap, play a land, drop an inferno titan on my opponent that had zero board, and usually only two or three cards in hand. The question I got asked all day long - ALL.DAY.LONG. - was "Is inferno titan really better than Primeval titan in this?" Answer? Yes. Inferno titan gives this build the reach it needs. Sure, primeval titan ramps hard, and lets your lands recover faster after a destructive force, but is it necessary? Think about it, when your opponent has between zero and one land, whats going to help more; hitting him for six, over four turns, while you ramp fast, or hitting him for 10+, and just killing him? Safe money on the 10+. If they have the one mana removal, green titan doesn't dodge it, but it might give them the time to find it. There are situations where green titan is better, and it is a situation called R/G Valakut ramp. Red titan also crushed more opponents with its E.T.B. Arc lightning, usually destroying mana dorks, fauna shamans, and planeswalkers alike. The rest of the deck is straightforward. You have ramp spells, planeswalkers, and utility cards. The two Chandra Nalar may seem odd, but they are a huge curveball most people scramble to deal with, since two turns after she drops, she clears their board and takes them to single digits by herself. Jace is self explanatory, as is Garruk. Into the roil was amazing all day. It bounced opposing planeswalkers after I cast a Destructive Force, stopped early fauna shamans from activating, bounced fast lotus cobra fed expensive spells, and often saved my own walkers and inferno titans from being sent into Oblivion. Lightning bolt was perfect as a three of as well, usually sniping walkers or mana guys, it showed up when I needed it, and I was never sad to see an extra one.
The board is fairly standard, and obvious switches should be seen. Pelakka Wurm usually comes in for Destructive Force, either pyroclasm or flashfreeze for Chandra, ramp walls for ramp spells, and ruinblaster against anything I can color or land screw. usally for an assortment of ramp spells, chandra, and a destructive force. Which ramp spell depended on if I was on the draw or play. The deck mulls well, and wants to mull into business hands. Round 1, game 1 I mulled to 5 against 4 color Shaman (hybrid of conscription package mythic and naya) and still handily won. In my first eight games, I mulled 4 times, half of them being R1G1, but it continued about the same for the rest of the day.
My losses were in round 2 against vengevine jund, and round 6 against a naya colored monument deck. vengevine jund killed me on turn 4 game one, and game two I thought I stabalized with an inferno titan clearing most of his board until he slave of bolased my titan and I conceded. Against the monument deck, It went to game three being very close, but he had a higher threat density than I did in game three, and I sided out destructive force for some reason, which I believe to be a mistake now. Overall, if there was another constructed PTQ in the season, I would take this deck as is and run with it, not making a single change. Congratulations to Alex, who lost to jund in the top 8, and to Matt B for showing his building skill and doing very well. Thats all for now,

Steve

M11 Woot

What can I say no updates in a while because we haven't had anything to really talk about. But with M11 here and being able to play with some of the new cards all I can is wow. I haven't like a set like since well since onslaught the power level of cards are just right. The sure variety of stuff in this set is what makes it good. Almost every format got something they can play I can't wait for my box to get here. Now for the top 5 of my favorite cards for M11 by format.

Top 5 Standard

Green
1)Primeval Titan – The decks this card will go in. The decks this might make viable I can't wait.
2)Obstinate Baloth – Hi Blightning meet Obstinate Baloth he wants to have a chat with you.
3)Cultivate – As good as Harrow is Cultivate is just a little better will difinately see play.
4)Fauna Shaman – Get 4 now if you want to play anything green in it for a long time.
5)Autumn's Veil – Gonna need this with black and blue getting some much needed love.

White
1)Sun Titan – I like this card simply because you can get Jace 1.0 back and kill Jace 2.0.
2)War Priest of Thune – Its not that strong but hey it kills a leyline and is a body.
3)Leyline of Sanctity – FU Discard, FU Burn, FU Mill, love this card.
4)Knight Exemplar – Cute card 3 months of this and Knight of the Reliquary but after those 3 months who knows.
5)Day of Judgment – Yeah it's back now why don't they start making better regenerating creatures.

Blue
1)Frost Titan – This maybe the worst Titan but its still good and thats saying alot.
2)Mana Leak – This changes everything....everything!
3)Leyline of Anticipation – I don't know yet about this card but I know If I was playing the control mirror I would want one out.
4)Conundrum Sphinx – When you build around its a Thieving Magpie for you and a hard choice for you opponent. Name something to deal with it or name something to further there board position.
5)Diminish – Good answer to a lot of cards and its blue.

Black
1)Grave Titan – What hasn't been said about this card besides amazing get them and get them quickly.
2)Leyline of the Void – FU Vegevine, FU Knight of the Reliquary, /sigh I like those cards.
3)Captivating Vampire – I guess we have to use it if we got nothing better when Nocturnus rotates.
4)Dark Tutelage – This ahhhh I just don't know needs scry to be good but lucky we got some cards to go with it.
5)Phylactery Lich – This will only get better when Scars comes out maybe will even get a cheap good indestructible Artifact.

Red
1)Inferno Titan – Talk about over kill if you get one good swing with this guy he will end the game.
2)Ember Hauler – Is amazing with combat damage not using the stack anymore we can keep getting good creatures like this can't wait.
3)Chandra's Spitfire – Stupid things you will do with this card make me laugh.
4)Fling – Oh no my ball lightning that I draw late is terrible your at 12 life and about to gain more good thing they printed this.
5)Destructive Force – Wildfires was good hey why not tack 1 more everything to it and see how this one does.

Multiplayer:Arch-Enemy

When I sat down to play this I thought to myself I hope this is fun. When I got to be the Arch-Enemy I became the juggernaut and it felt good. Flipping schemes is exciting and fun you never know what your gonna get and the rest of the table sits there waiting for you to see how badly your gonna screw them.Taking on 5 people and almost winning is a feat in of itself and its epic. Before I play again though I need to make a Arch-Enemy EDH deck and a normal deck for when I'm the Arch-Enemy. My idea centers around hard to kill creatures that smash face with selective creature wipe and a little bit of life gain. Next week I will have deck list because this is gonna take a lot of brainstorming I'm so pumped!

TLDR version:I love ARCH its great multiplayer format and I hope wizard continues to make more. This how it feels to be the Arch-Enemy Kicking ass Link the spear is a fireball.

Now for house rules that should help your ARC experience.

Stay away from combo decks.
5 vs the ARCH should be the max but if you feel you want more go for it.
More to come as I play more.

Outside Information – The New Extended

For those of you “in the loop” this won’t be anything much besides my own observations, but for anyone who hasn’t fully read the changes to extended, go check this out.

http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/95b.

If that doesn’t throw the format on its head I don’t know what will. Let’s take a look at what sets are going to be relevant

Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, Future Sight, Tenth Edition, Lorwyn, Morningtide, Shadowmooe, Eventide, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Alara Reborn, Magic 2010, Zendikar, Worldwake, and Rise of the Eldrazi. At least until Scars of Mirrodin comes out, then the Time Spiral block and Tenth Edition will rotate as well.

For the majority of us, we will be looking at extended as just being Lorwyn/M10 and up, since the only thing that will include TSP block in high level play is Pro Tour Amsterdam. The past four years of magic that had the new extended legal sets in them brought us some of the most interesting and hated decks I can remember, a quick glance gives us this list.

5CC
RW Cruise Control (aka Boat Brew)
Faeries
UW Fish
Planeswalker Control
UW control (all variants of)
Jund
Naya
Bant (all forms of)
RW Aggro
Time Sieve (Yeah!)
Elves (combo and BG)

That’s a lot of really REALLY good decks, and while some held their place longer than others, all of them had an impact, but seeing that list, we see a trend; of the twelve decks there, seven of them rely heavily on blue, after that the next most common color is white. What does this tell us? If you don’t have a set of Jace TMS, Cryptic Commands, and Mystic Gates, go get them. Now. Like right now. Stop reading this article and go buy them. If you don’t have them they will go up in price, and probably spike as extended season gets closer. To those of you bitching about your Goyf’s, they are still a legacy staple. If you don’t want to play Legacy, then get rid of them for cryptic commands and other cards you should be on the lookout for. Here is a great place to start

http://www.deckcheck.net/mpc.php?format=Lrw_M10_SoA

Other than that, do some research yourself on whats been good the past couple of years, it shouldn’t be too hard with the decks listed above and the deck check link. That’s all for now. As the format gets explored more and I get more relevant information, look for updates on both Standard and Double Standard (new extended).

Stephen Moss

Outside Information – Looking forward

The current state of the metagame is one that is dominated by aggro. For combo/control players like myself, we find it rather boring. Sure, sending guys into the red zone over and over is fun, watching your bloodbraid elf cascade into win far more often than it should never gets old, right? Time Sieve/Open the Vaults is a deck I champion every chance I get to, but honestly the metagame has shifted out of its favorable slice of the pie. This forces us to either play a subpar deck for the format, adapt, or move to aggro. Personally, I choose to adapt, and with that I present today’s Outside Information

Mono Black Control
A Standard Magic deck, by Paul Beemer
4th place at a Nationals Qualifier tournament in California, United States on 2010-05-16
As reported at http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Events.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/natqual10/california
Creatures
4 Abyssal Persecutor 
4 Gatekeeper Of Malakir
3 Hypnotic Specter
3 Vampire Hexmage

Instants
3 Consume The Meek
3 Smother
4 Tendrils Of Corruption

Planeswalkers
1 Liliana Vess
1 Sorin Markov

Sorceries
3 Consuming Vapors
3 Mind Sludge
3 Sign In Blood

Basic Lands
23 Swamp
Lands
2 Dread Statuary


Sideboard:
3 Pithing Needle
3 Scepter Of Fugue
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Malakir Bloodwitch
1 Vampire Hexmage
3 Doom Blade
1 Smother
1 Haunting Echoes
1 All Is Dust

Ahhhh good ol MBC. I’m partial to the deck myself; I stated competitive magic with MBC in Odyssey/Onslaught standard. Enough nostalgia though, let’s look at why I believe this is the control deck to play.

The creature package is impressive. 2/1 first strikers that deal with planeswalkers and provide a solid defense against most of the creatures currently played. Gatekeepers give you the 2 for 1 removal you need, more often than not taking something out with it on the block. Hypnotic specter is a vastly underrated card, and is a must answer card. It may be a slow clock, but it’s still a clock, still flies, and discards at random. Persecutors are a much better wincon than most people give credit. Its often left on the field a turn or two too long, and ends up winning the game from advantage since the deck doesn’t lack ways to kill it off when its time.

The removal package does its job well, consume, smother, and tendrils are the three best black removal spells around, since they aren’t restricted in the same way doom blade is (non black is bad right now I hear) and consuming vapors paired with tendrils gives you the life resources to outlast and take control of the board situation.

Mind sludge paired with specter provide six sources of quality hand disruption, the sign in blood gives you the much needed card draw, and the planeswalkers should speak for themselves. 25 lands may seem light at first, but seeing the overall curve feels correct. The deck wants to draw black sources, so I agree with the lack of fetchlands. Dread statuary is often forgotten about until it kills an attacking creature, or an unaware opponent.

Where I find the deck lacking is the sideboard. It’s rather chaotic. Black has trouble with planeswalkers as a whole outside of hexmage, so I agree with the 4th one in the board, but I think pithing needle should go to a 4 of. It never lacks targets in an environment of walkers, manlands, fetchlands, and multiple creatures and other cards with an activated ability (like time sieve!). A single Bloodwitch makes me cry, since it should be interchangeable straight across for persecutor in most situations. Heres the board I would take to a PTQ tomorrow.

4 Pithing Needle
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
2 Haunting Echoes
2 Ravenous Trap
1 Hypnotic Specter
1 Smother
1 Vampire Hexmage

Ya know whats scary? Vengevine. Ravenous trap and echos stops it dead, as well as providing side hate against any graveyard shenanigans, and echos wrecks midrange and control. The singletons here provide the fine tuning against whatever matchup your playing against, and they should all be self explanatory. The most important thing here is that all of the board cards cover a wide range of decks that they provide value against. Depending on your metagame you can go without some cards, and some other cards like Duress or Deathmark may better suit your needs. Give the deck a thought if you’re looking for something off radar to play, it takes a lot of people by surprise. Till next time,

Stephen Moss

How focus ties into Magic.

We all get to a point, no matter the time or situation where we tell ourselves to focus. Whether its deck building, the beginning, middle, or end of a tournament, and life in general.

Magic players are a little ADD by design. Things are constantly changing. The internet brings constant change to almost every format. One constant is focus. Focus on what you want in deck design. The theme, flow of the deck and mana base all must tie in and be focused on a singular goal of being a functional deck.

I have a specific scenario in mind. We have a player at our local shop. I overheard that he lost all his matches that night so I told him to bring me his deck and his extras. His deck had a theme (totem armor) and a fairly balanced mana base. But it was all over the map after that. His 1-of's were

Sphinx of Magosi
Archon of Justice
Path to Exile
Lone Missionary
Goliath Sphinx
Marshal's Anthem

This is a small sample. But he had some Umbra's, several aura's, and 4 Totem Guide Hartebeast.

I took a look at his extras and I find some ways to stabilize his mana a bit more. I take out his 1 of's and a few of the weaker aura's. Add more aggressive cards, lower the average cost of the cards in his deck, and add a little better removal, the final addition was adding the creature that makes all his aura's Totem Armors. It's not going to win a PTQ but I guarantee he'll hang in better at the local FNM.

All of this is done without any outside help. All I looked at was his spare cards. The best part was that I was able to strengthen what he wanted to do without overhauling the core of the deck.

This isn't just deckbuilding, its about gameplay as well. I've been in half a dozen bigger tournaments starting 3 - 1 or 4 - 1 even 5 - 2. Once the pressure builds I lose focus. This leads to sloppy play which leads to me starting a 9 round 5k tournament 4 - 1 and finishing 5 - 4. The sad part was that all of my losses were winnable matches. My own lack of focus (never forget about your opponent's Garruk) cost me a chance to win $2000 dollars.

How do we counteract this lack of focus. Well in the above scenario I go way too concerned with going 8 - 1 instead of focusing in round 6 on going 5 - 1. That's a big start. I can't control what happens in three round. I can control the game in front of me. Even further I can focus on the play in front of me. One play at a time. We can only focus on what we can control.

There are many ways to make yourself a better player. Focus is a big part of that stride.

Rant:Winning=Fun?

Rant:Does Winning=Fun?

When I first started playing it was a lot of fun to play magic with my friends. Then something terrible happen I wanted to win more and more. My only goal was to finally win a FNM I went to great lengths to better my game and try to perfect it. And some where along the line the fun got lost in the shuffle to be the best. Instead of just having some people over to play cops and aliens or go to Carl's Jr after the FNM and play multi-player it all just became play testing. Play test for this play test for that nobody wants to play multiplayer anymore.

For a time I thought this was ok but now I just want to have fun again. So I decided to try to get people to excited about other formats besides standard. I have been pushing EDH in my circle now with great success slowly but surely my friends are coming back to there senses and realizing hey I used to just play for fun. Winning is always good but winning should be a bonus not what you focus on all the time. The journey to a win or lost is what you should focus on not the outcome because hey you won't win them all. Might as well have fun.

Moral:Play something you like not something that wins and you will enjoy the game much longer.