General CBS
- Thread starter James Stevenson
- Start date
The weird conditional counterspell? What changes would you propose?
Oh, maybe... I always like decks that allow me to play Goyfs and Snapcasters at the same time. Mainly to justify money spent on said cards.
Chris Taylor
Contributor
Is that tribal flames deck of yours still good? I liked that one
Since then Deathrite and Nacatl have rotated, so it'd be a completely different deck.
They were never legal in the same standard? What are you talking about.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Modern?
Modern i think?? deathrite got banned, nacatl got banned / unbanned
Yeah, but snap IS currently played together with nacatl in tribal zoo, so!
The old deck was about curving into Geist / Lingering Souls and finishing the job with Deathrite drains + 12 burn spells (+ Snapcaster), while being packed with interaction for Pod / Twin.
My understanding is that the new deck is much more pure aggression, opening with various Nacatl and aggressive creatures instead of mana dorks.
My understanding is that the new deck is much more pure aggression, opening with various Nacatl and aggressive creatures instead of mana dorks.
Look how charming this distribution is.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Look how charming this distribution is.
Cut two holes in the middle hump and you got yourself a ghost!
Laz
Developer
Look how charming this distribution is.
Frequency of Haiku poems appearing on this forum?
Oh, February 18th, 4am through 6pm, you will be missed.
*ahem* charming distribution.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Ah. Ah! I see what you did there!
CML
Contributor
RANT
---
so a month ago i send an article to cooperfauss on a PTQ winning deck featuring me and my excellent writing and get some platitude about how there's a lack of space due to GP San Jose recaps, then this week the entire CFB page is filled with stuff from both the GP and we get a sweet article about a modern dredge deck with which alex west, seattle grognard, well-connected if you can call anyone whose social connections are based primarily on magic "well-connected" (which you can't), went 2-x drop in vancouver. sweet.
granted his grognard-in-arms Zaiem (former CFB editor) compiled a winning record with it, so that obviously passes muster in a world where people tell you to board out seeker of the way in r/w mirrors. moreover, 2 match wins is (empirically) more than gerry T can compile on average in local tournaments in Seattle with most of the decks he publishes. for more great content including "fork over $20 so you can read about the deck i went 0-2 drop with at card kingdom on monday" please visit scg or if you're feeling like not wasting money (as long as you don't buy cards!) cfb.
---
so this is why you never put nerds in charge of anything.
---
so a month ago i send an article to cooperfauss on a PTQ winning deck featuring me and my excellent writing and get some platitude about how there's a lack of space due to GP San Jose recaps, then this week the entire CFB page is filled with stuff from both the GP and we get a sweet article about a modern dredge deck with which alex west, seattle grognard, well-connected if you can call anyone whose social connections are based primarily on magic "well-connected" (which you can't), went 2-x drop in vancouver. sweet.
granted his grognard-in-arms Zaiem (former CFB editor) compiled a winning record with it, so that obviously passes muster in a world where people tell you to board out seeker of the way in r/w mirrors. moreover, 2 match wins is (empirically) more than gerry T can compile on average in local tournaments in Seattle with most of the decks he publishes. for more great content including "fork over $20 so you can read about the deck i went 0-2 drop with at card kingdom on monday" please visit scg or if you're feeling like not wasting money (as long as you don't buy cards!) cfb.
---
so this is why you never put nerds in charge of anything.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
CML
Contributor
not to mention that mongoloid marshall who in mental retardation and enthusiasm for cheerleading should be christened "RUDY"
here's the article, there is a version not bowdlerized somewhere on legendstech.tumblr.com
---
Good, (Giving, and) Game: A Saturday at the Spearmint Rhino
by: CML
“Hi guys.” My name is CML, and I am a massive troll. Please excuse my uncharacteristic professionalism and positivity. I’ve been wondering when I’d write again for a major site, and at last I have a tale worth telling.
Lately I have been having a lot of undeserved success at Standard. Seattle is the toughest meta in the world, with FNMs like Idaho PTQs, and I’ve made five top 8’s in six tournaments. This is not because I am good — I am not good — it is because I am decent, most everyone screws up this format in a fundamental way, and the deck I’m playing is unbelievably great.
First I will talk about the deck.
SPEARMINT RHINO
28 Guys
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Courser of Kruphix
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Siege Rhino
4 Doomwake Giant
3 Hornet Queen
8 Spells
2 Abzan Charm
3 Hero’s Downfall
3 Whip of Erebos
24 Lands
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
4 Windswept Heath
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Forest
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Temple of Silence
1 Plains
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
15 Sideboard
4 Thoughtseize
2 Reclamation Sage
2 Utter End
2 Arbor Colossus
2 Bile Blight
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Glare of Heresy
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
I don’t want to be one of those guys who says “OMG my deck is so good” while gushing about a B/W Warriors build that won FNM, so I will instead insult every other deck in the format. [link to http://legendstech.tumblr.com/post/106643354311/top-5-worst-standard-decks]
This the Standard format with the lowest power level since I started playing (in Mirrodin Besieged). Spearmint Rhino isn’t that great, it’s just that all the other decks are so bad. Standard is full of an unprecedented number of awful decks. The plan of many decks makes no sense and they have no good matchups. More often in this format than any other have my opponents curved out perfectly, drawn a decent mix of lands and spells and at no point had a chance of winning the game. The Whip decks are clearly the least awful decks in the format, but most builds are soiled by the inclusion of wishy-washy one-of’s that say: “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
The Spearmint Rhino is all about trying new things, and in its time it has had a lot of one-tournament stands. But the Fate Reforged prerelease is a couple weeks away! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see how unplayable Jeskai Tokens continues to be after the printing of multiple very obvious and very pushed support mythics.
—
So I was cruising along with the Spearmint Rhino until a few weekends ago, when I washed out of a local PTQ. Squishing a good friend in the finals of the PreTQ provided only modest satisfaction. So what better way to amplify my disappointment than to play in a PTQ the next Saturday morning? Anyone who whines about PTQs on the basis of “terrible value” is missing the point of Magic, and anyone who doesn’t whine about them on the basis of “miserable experience” is missing it even worse. The few people outside my orbit who know me know me from never shutting up about Martyr of Sands, and [link http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4516&d=226198] getting third in a PTQ on Magic Online is about as miserable as you can get. Whatever, it wasn’t like I was going to miss it, however miserable — which goes a long way towards explaining why PTQs are what they are.
I woke up too early and met the rest of Team Legends Tech [link to legendstech.tumblr.com] in a dark corner. In the spirit of the moment we switched out our Nissas for Arbor Colossi, six power long, six toughness wide — a jolly green giant whose mana cost contains “GGG.”
[arbor colossus image]
We knew we could give as good as we got, but how good would we be at getting good games?
—
Round 1 vs. BUG Control
Round 1 always scares the hell out of me. This is not because I am nervous — I always think I will win — it is because I often do not win.
Game one could have been lost in like five different ways — like the turn-3 Ashiok he slammed off the top. Spearmint Rhino is a true midrange deck in that it cannot pressure opposing planeswalkers, and Standard’s current crop is so beefy that attacking any of them is like trying to kill a Gideon in combat. Whatever, I have a Hero’s Downfall. He has a Kiora emblem. Does Hornet Queen resolve? Hornet Queen resolves! Eventually I figure out he has no interest in killing me with his 9/9s, so I kill him with 1/1s.
[kraken token image]
“Kraken toast, vomit.”
Game two is less close, as he casts double Drown in Sorrow on a board of his Courser to my Doomwake and Rhino. Usually when people board in and cast sweepers against Spearmint Rhino, they kill themselves, and this guy was just more explicit about it than usual.
Round 2 vs. BG Constellation
Game one looks like it’s about to be lost to a Biblical flood, but Whip shows up in the knick of time and kills him like the horse in Raskolnikov’s dream. A bunch of people say the Constellation matchup is bad for Spearmint Rhino, but, meh, not really. We can pressure their life total with early Rhinos — they have few ways to come from behind — and often that is enough. Should the game go long, they’re better if the board is stalled, they have a Nykthos, and we can’t exile their Pharika. But rarely do the stars so neatly align.
That being said, I nearly found a creative way to lose game two. The cards that matter in Whip mirrors are, in descending order of unbeatability: Pharika, Doomwake, Eidolon, Courser. I have everything but the Doomwake and am at serious risk of dying to Bee beats. Swell! An apollen way to lose. I topdeck an EpiPen to take some of the sting out of his attack.
Round 3 vs. Old-School Jeskai Ascendancy
A lot of Magic is “ranging” your opponent, i.e. guessing the composition of his hand based on incomplete information. (That these “reads” require any imagination will surprise readers of sci-fi, fantasy, and xkcd.) My reading skills come from these places: 1. Poker; 2. A B.A. in English; 3. Online dating.
For me, what makes Standard harder than Legacy or Modern, and Limited harder still, is that “villains” have broader, more opaque ranges. You pretty much know what’s up in Modern after Colonnade, go; and you know what everyone has in Legacy all the time because all the decks try to do the same thing all the time. If you don’t, there’s a card you can use for that.
[Gitaxian Probe]
I rip a nice grip of Sylvan Caryatid with triple Rhino and begin to drool when he leads with Frontier Bivouac. He follows up with Sylvan Caryatid off of an … Island? If it’s something like “Dig Through Time aggro,” I’ll always win, so it’s time to worry about something else, except my hand doesn’t interact, so there’s no point in worrying. He goes Jeskai Ascendancy, Treasure Cruise, Retraction Helix, Briber’s Purse, Altar of the Brood, and I die. The old Jeskai Ascendancy deck reminds me of the Modern Amulet deck because 1. It is a six-card combo 2. that they have EVERY TIME. Why can’t they just reprint Acidic Slime?
In that kind of game one, there’s not much the Spearmint Rhino emcee can do. Our deck doesn’t interact, but punishes the opponent for trying to interact, and its clock is awful. It also cannot beat most decks’ best draws. Good thing a typical plan is “curve out from 2 to 5 with eleven tap-lands” or “play Hordeling Outburst and Anger of the Gods in the same deck.” I board in some Thoughtseizes and Utter Ends and hope his deck does nothing. It works.
Round 4 vs. Swing Easy When Sidisi
The four-color Sidisi deck was on our radar for a few reasons:
1. Sidisi is very good in the deck.
2. Soul of Theros is a decent card in the current meta.
3. Caleb Durward is the spirit animal of all vile brews we brew up.
4. The whole concept is hilarious.
The first iteration of Spearmint Rhino had two Souls of Theros, but we later felt the card was too clunky to justify when it also couldn’t trump the mirror Doomwake plan. Furthermore, double-White was often a problem.
Game one is as lopsided as a college-football non-conference game, ending by the score of 70-7. The plan is the same as last time: hope his deck self-destructs, and kill him by casting one spell every turn. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t’ve won game three — he had a way to get out from under my two Doomwakes — but he didn’t find it. Games go long with Spearmint Rhino, and the longer they go, the more mistakes they will make.
Round 5 vs. Cat Tribal
I keep trying to come up with names for the BWG deck that plays Rakshasa Deathdealer, Anafenza, and Wingmate Roc. So far “Cat Tribal” is the best I have, with “Don Cherry’s Roc ‘Em Shock ‘Em Hockey” a close second. “Abzan Aggro” is out of the question.
I’ve played this matchup a bunch and I don’t know if it’s good. Their threats are big, resilient, and annoying. The games are very technical, and you have to figure out what to play around. Usually you try not to get Roc’ed, which will lead to some counterintuitive blocks like Courser on Deathdealer. Sometimes they will Roc you anyway. Sometimes you will have a Hornet Queen.
Postboard games are hard because they board into Back to Nature and we board into $@(*#. The Spearmint Rhino is an engine deck and is sensitive to overboarding, but you’ve gotta take out some amount of Doomwakes and Eidolons. The whole thing is a difficult balance between preserving inevitability and shoring up the early game. Games on the draw are hard, too — to catch up to hands that curve from Cats into Rocs, you usually need to play two spells in a turn. As Evan Nelson explains here [http://legendstech.tumblr.com/post/107484379146/riding-the-dilu-tauntaun-a-trip-to-hoth-and-back], Thoughtseize is what lets you do that. We’ve been boarding more and more Thoughtseizes in against aggressive decks, and it is at its best against a deck with a delicate mix of threats and answers. Game one I make a Queen, and game two I Thoughtseize a cat and make some Coursers. In the end, his Junk can’t touch my Junk.
Round 6 vs. Yore-Tiller Aggro
He leads with Battlefield Forge into Mounta — err, can I play a Plains instead? Sure! My opponent looks nervous and under the age of twelve.
A brief aside about scumming (or whatever you want to call it, maybe a more neutral term is better). It is true that some of the people deserve to miss some of the triggers all of the time, and that all people deserve to miss some of the triggers some of the time. It is also true that reminding opponents for missed triggers is miserable, and that by letting people get away with it, I am both ensuring they’ll continue to do it and putting myself in a rough spot when my opponents don’t let me do the same. Whatever, it’s up to you.
He plays a Seeker and I block the Seeker with a Courser. You will often want to do this — if he Lightning Strikes the Courser, you’ve gained 6 and Time Walked him, which gains you a lot more. In this case, the kid has nothing on 4, so it’s not really a Time Walk. Around turn 7 I get bored of baiting counterspells and jam a Whip …
(Remember how the Burn decks last season had decent mana, a potent man-land, resilient threats, and scary and versatile spells? Me too! That deck was great. If you passed the turn, they’d kill you. If you pass the turn against Burn 2015, they untap, stare at your Rhino, and rue the day they sleeved up Jeskai Charm. And old burn couldn’t even beat a Whip.)
… Whip resolves. In game two he gets color-screwed off Blue and I Thoughtseize on like turn 5, revealing:
[image of]
Stoke the Flames
Stoke the Flames
Disdainful Stroke
Jeskai Charm
Treasure Cruise
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
Way sweeter than Jeskai Tokens, and certainly no worse. He does nothing and I win.
Round 7 vs. @#*!, I Got Paired Down
As far as I can tell, the whole phenomenon of “ID into Top 8” is as overstated as “Pro Magic player.” He easily handles my Junk and I look for a peer group to complain to.
Round 8 vs. The Bathroom Break
… So I should still be able to draw into top 8, right? I’m paired against some kind of cheap and dirty commie Red deck. A third party tells me it isn’t safe for us to draw, as the one of us with lower breakers might draw out. I have the higher breakers. “Guess that means we should draw,” I say. It works! I am a genius. My previous opponents all die before my eyes. I am an idiot! I make it anyway at 8th. I am a genius! It would’ve taken substantial genius to miss t8 in a small 8-rounder after starting 6-0, and I don’t quite get there.
I’ve known a lot of people who can calculate your chances of drawing into the t8, but none who can do the same while also factoring in win percentage against the last Swiss opponent, lost equity from being on the draw in the t8, possible t8 matchups, and so on. This would make a great Frank Karsten article, though to be honest I prefer his videos because his accent is soothing.
Quarters vs. Cat Tribal
I lose the first game quickly, then win the second game just as fast. I don’t know what Cat Tribal players are doing when they keep hands without early pressure, since their deck mulligans well enough, and starting with Anafenza isn’t the worst.
Game three gets hairy in a hurry. My hand is strong enough to repel the early pressure, so I take Whip with my t2 Thoughtseize. Then I stall on four lands for some time and decide to Wayfinder with Anafenza in play, exiling a Hornet Queen. My Whip joins my pair of Rhinos, but his monstrous Fleecemanes are impassable.
I pause and consider the situation, though not enough to come up with a plan. (Who actually comes up with good ideas when they tank?) I rue my friend’s advice to board more aggressively into an anti-aggro plan, because I have boarded out my “win conditions.” (What the hell is a “win condition,” anyway? It’s indistinguishable from “card I put in my decks.”) The turns pass like days in the Great-War trenches and I begin to dread “something that kills my guys” — Elspeth, End Hostilities, Duneblast. But at this point: what’s there to play around?
I draw and shuffle and play lands off the top and still can find nothing to break the stall, not that improbable when that’s one of two Hornet Queens. Some minor battle with Wingmate Rocs and Arbor Colossi peters out on the periphery like a third-world Cold-War conflict. I go down to fewer cards in Library and have the absurd thought: “What if I lose this game?” Then I find a Hornet Queen. Aside from my bad board plan, premature Wayfinder, and deadness to sweepers, I don’t hate how I played this game — Thoughtseizing the Whip was definitely right, and the Eidolons I left in did draw me into a win, eventually.
Semis vs. UW Control
Meanwhile, at the other tables, one of the best players has just been eliminated.
“What happened?”
“I punted.”
“How?”
“Played out an extra Courser and got Wrathed.”
“End Hostilities?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it out of his aggro deck.”
That should answer the question “Why the hell are people boarding in sweepers in their aggro decks?”
I’m given a plan for the semis by my friend, who died to the same player a few rounds ago. I execute the plan perfectly for game one and therefore lose. I decide to diverge and keep in some Eidolons and Doomwakes, which match up well against the UW deck’s plans of attrition and Elspeth. You might want to keep in Downfalls, but reacting to Elspeth sounds miserable.
Game two I force a mull to five and Thoughtseize a Devouring Light out of an opener of two lands, Light, Light, Ingenuity, because I am an imbecile. My plan to mana-screw a 28-land deck is looking really bad after he plays Ingenuity on curve, but my Eidolons are too much. I likely blow it in a number of other ways too. Game three I learn by Thoughtseizing Dig Through Time. The rest involves a Fated Retribution that kills a Courser, a Rhino, and a Prognostic Sphinx. Whip into Rhino ends the game.
I’m not sure what to think about UW Control. It can never win control mirrors, and it’s gotta be worse against Spearmint Rhino than UB. Perilous Vault is a scarier sweeper than End Hostilities, and Ashiok is a scarier threat than Elspeth. There’s also something sacrilegious about playing End Hostilities in a deck where it actually belongs — if he really wants to rock it, he should at least board into Battlewise Hoplites.
Finals vs. Cat Tribal
I’m on the back foot all of game one and screw up a couple of tactical points that are worth recounting in detail. The first is: I’m at 4 with a board of Hornet Queen, Sylvan Caryatid, Whip against his Rhino, Deathdealer, Lion. He attacks, and I realize I can’t trade my Queen with his Rhino because I’ll die to monstrous. I have to block Queen on Deathdealer, Caryatid on Rhino, and this is easily avoidable by realizing he had an Urborg and I could tap my Heath without fetching.
The next turn I cast another Queen and choose to block with it instead of some Bees. My reasoning is that I want it in the bin so I don’t have to worry about Anafenza, but I could have beaten that card easily. He plays a scryland and keeps on top. The next turn, I whiff on an untapped land to both cast Rhino and activate Whip, so I just Whip back the Queen, begin to gloat inside, and die to Bile Blight in a way that was preventable twice-over. Rob says, “That was preventable, by the way,” in unison with the self-loathing of my interior monologue. Cat Tribal tends to make the game too technical for my tastes. Fortunately, the nice gentleman piloting it is as tired as I am — as tired as Yossarian! — and more than makes up for my goofs with a bad keep game two, and a slam of Lilly game three when he could have played some removal. A Rhino or two later and he graciously applauds, which no one who knows me would ever do.
A few more comments before I close the Spearmint Rhino for the night:
Never before have I played in a Standard format where tactics are so subordinated to strategy. The games are both rich and dull, like a second-rate chess game beginning with 1. d4, a walk on the beach, an Ishiguro novel. There are a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of decisions to fuck up, but precision is so unimportant compared to accuracy. Most of the stronger players I’ve battled have made a lot of right decisions, but they have not known which of those decisions were important. Hence we get Whip decks with 2 Doomwakes, mirror matches where everyone leaves in Caryatids and Queens, people playing Jeskai Tokens at all. The emphasis on strategy implies deckbuilding trumps gameplay, and my win proves that is true; Spearmint Rhino must be good, as I am not. Yet I wonder if the current format brings out my strengths as a Magic player — a stress on including the right cards, or at least boarding them out for no reason; long games where neither player is thwarted or defined by sharp imprecisions, or at least I’m not; a more poetic play-style, based on feel, devoid of calculation, that clueless commentators exalt in Brazilian soccer players and pre-boom poker mediocrities.
That, and getting lucky as hell. Really, though, this Standard format is the most skill-intensive in years, at least judging by how badly everyone plays in it, myself included. I can recall fifty misplays I made over the course of the last five weekends, and any spectator could find hundreds more, but when they take a Hornet Queen off Commune and bin a Whip in the mirror, or you Thoughtseize them and see Hordeling Outburst, double Anger of the Gods, who cares?
As for the PT, I’ve wanted to go to Brussels since I read Heart of Darkness. I’d heard from one friend that it was the D.C. of Europe, which is how it appears in Heart of Darkness — gross economic inequality masked by the pretense of virtue in government work. Another said it was more like Cleveland, which sounds even better.
My trolly and combative personality means I get to be smug when I win. That kind of schadenfreude is at the core of every competitive endeavor and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. The best things in life are free — for everything else, there’s Magic cards.
CML
legendstech.tumblr.com
here's the article, there is a version not bowdlerized somewhere on legendstech.tumblr.com
---
Good, (Giving, and) Game: A Saturday at the Spearmint Rhino
by: CML
“Hi guys.” My name is CML, and I am a massive troll. Please excuse my uncharacteristic professionalism and positivity. I’ve been wondering when I’d write again for a major site, and at last I have a tale worth telling.
Lately I have been having a lot of undeserved success at Standard. Seattle is the toughest meta in the world, with FNMs like Idaho PTQs, and I’ve made five top 8’s in six tournaments. This is not because I am good — I am not good — it is because I am decent, most everyone screws up this format in a fundamental way, and the deck I’m playing is unbelievably great.
First I will talk about the deck.
SPEARMINT RHINO
28 Guys
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Satyr Wayfinder
4 Courser of Kruphix
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
4 Eidolon of Blossoms
4 Siege Rhino
4 Doomwake Giant
3 Hornet Queen
8 Spells
2 Abzan Charm
3 Hero’s Downfall
3 Whip of Erebos
24 Lands
4 Sandsteppe Citadel
4 Temple of Malady
4 Windswept Heath
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Forest
1 Caves of Koilos
1 Temple of Silence
1 Plains
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
15 Sideboard
4 Thoughtseize
2 Reclamation Sage
2 Utter End
2 Arbor Colossus
2 Bile Blight
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Glare of Heresy
1 Pharika, God of Affliction
I don’t want to be one of those guys who says “OMG my deck is so good” while gushing about a B/W Warriors build that won FNM, so I will instead insult every other deck in the format. [link to http://legendstech.tumblr.com/post/106643354311/top-5-worst-standard-decks]
This the Standard format with the lowest power level since I started playing (in Mirrodin Besieged). Spearmint Rhino isn’t that great, it’s just that all the other decks are so bad. Standard is full of an unprecedented number of awful decks. The plan of many decks makes no sense and they have no good matchups. More often in this format than any other have my opponents curved out perfectly, drawn a decent mix of lands and spells and at no point had a chance of winning the game. The Whip decks are clearly the least awful decks in the format, but most builds are soiled by the inclusion of wishy-washy one-of’s that say: “I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
The Spearmint Rhino is all about trying new things, and in its time it has had a lot of one-tournament stands. But the Fate Reforged prerelease is a couple weeks away! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see how unplayable Jeskai Tokens continues to be after the printing of multiple very obvious and very pushed support mythics.
—
So I was cruising along with the Spearmint Rhino until a few weekends ago, when I washed out of a local PTQ. Squishing a good friend in the finals of the PreTQ provided only modest satisfaction. So what better way to amplify my disappointment than to play in a PTQ the next Saturday morning? Anyone who whines about PTQs on the basis of “terrible value” is missing the point of Magic, and anyone who doesn’t whine about them on the basis of “miserable experience” is missing it even worse. The few people outside my orbit who know me know me from never shutting up about Martyr of Sands, and [link http://www.mtgtop8.com/event?e=4516&d=226198] getting third in a PTQ on Magic Online is about as miserable as you can get. Whatever, it wasn’t like I was going to miss it, however miserable — which goes a long way towards explaining why PTQs are what they are.
I woke up too early and met the rest of Team Legends Tech [link to legendstech.tumblr.com] in a dark corner. In the spirit of the moment we switched out our Nissas for Arbor Colossi, six power long, six toughness wide — a jolly green giant whose mana cost contains “GGG.”
[arbor colossus image]
We knew we could give as good as we got, but how good would we be at getting good games?
—
Round 1 vs. BUG Control
Round 1 always scares the hell out of me. This is not because I am nervous — I always think I will win — it is because I often do not win.
Game one could have been lost in like five different ways — like the turn-3 Ashiok he slammed off the top. Spearmint Rhino is a true midrange deck in that it cannot pressure opposing planeswalkers, and Standard’s current crop is so beefy that attacking any of them is like trying to kill a Gideon in combat. Whatever, I have a Hero’s Downfall. He has a Kiora emblem. Does Hornet Queen resolve? Hornet Queen resolves! Eventually I figure out he has no interest in killing me with his 9/9s, so I kill him with 1/1s.
[kraken token image]
“Kraken toast, vomit.”
Game two is less close, as he casts double Drown in Sorrow on a board of his Courser to my Doomwake and Rhino. Usually when people board in and cast sweepers against Spearmint Rhino, they kill themselves, and this guy was just more explicit about it than usual.
Round 2 vs. BG Constellation
Game one looks like it’s about to be lost to a Biblical flood, but Whip shows up in the knick of time and kills him like the horse in Raskolnikov’s dream. A bunch of people say the Constellation matchup is bad for Spearmint Rhino, but, meh, not really. We can pressure their life total with early Rhinos — they have few ways to come from behind — and often that is enough. Should the game go long, they’re better if the board is stalled, they have a Nykthos, and we can’t exile their Pharika. But rarely do the stars so neatly align.
That being said, I nearly found a creative way to lose game two. The cards that matter in Whip mirrors are, in descending order of unbeatability: Pharika, Doomwake, Eidolon, Courser. I have everything but the Doomwake and am at serious risk of dying to Bee beats. Swell! An apollen way to lose. I topdeck an EpiPen to take some of the sting out of his attack.
Round 3 vs. Old-School Jeskai Ascendancy
A lot of Magic is “ranging” your opponent, i.e. guessing the composition of his hand based on incomplete information. (That these “reads” require any imagination will surprise readers of sci-fi, fantasy, and xkcd.) My reading skills come from these places: 1. Poker; 2. A B.A. in English; 3. Online dating.
For me, what makes Standard harder than Legacy or Modern, and Limited harder still, is that “villains” have broader, more opaque ranges. You pretty much know what’s up in Modern after Colonnade, go; and you know what everyone has in Legacy all the time because all the decks try to do the same thing all the time. If you don’t, there’s a card you can use for that.
[Gitaxian Probe]
I rip a nice grip of Sylvan Caryatid with triple Rhino and begin to drool when he leads with Frontier Bivouac. He follows up with Sylvan Caryatid off of an … Island? If it’s something like “Dig Through Time aggro,” I’ll always win, so it’s time to worry about something else, except my hand doesn’t interact, so there’s no point in worrying. He goes Jeskai Ascendancy, Treasure Cruise, Retraction Helix, Briber’s Purse, Altar of the Brood, and I die. The old Jeskai Ascendancy deck reminds me of the Modern Amulet deck because 1. It is a six-card combo 2. that they have EVERY TIME. Why can’t they just reprint Acidic Slime?
In that kind of game one, there’s not much the Spearmint Rhino emcee can do. Our deck doesn’t interact, but punishes the opponent for trying to interact, and its clock is awful. It also cannot beat most decks’ best draws. Good thing a typical plan is “curve out from 2 to 5 with eleven tap-lands” or “play Hordeling Outburst and Anger of the Gods in the same deck.” I board in some Thoughtseizes and Utter Ends and hope his deck does nothing. It works.
Round 4 vs. Swing Easy When Sidisi
The four-color Sidisi deck was on our radar for a few reasons:
1. Sidisi is very good in the deck.
2. Soul of Theros is a decent card in the current meta.
3. Caleb Durward is the spirit animal of all vile brews we brew up.
4. The whole concept is hilarious.
The first iteration of Spearmint Rhino had two Souls of Theros, but we later felt the card was too clunky to justify when it also couldn’t trump the mirror Doomwake plan. Furthermore, double-White was often a problem.
Game one is as lopsided as a college-football non-conference game, ending by the score of 70-7. The plan is the same as last time: hope his deck self-destructs, and kill him by casting one spell every turn. I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t’ve won game three — he had a way to get out from under my two Doomwakes — but he didn’t find it. Games go long with Spearmint Rhino, and the longer they go, the more mistakes they will make.
Round 5 vs. Cat Tribal
I keep trying to come up with names for the BWG deck that plays Rakshasa Deathdealer, Anafenza, and Wingmate Roc. So far “Cat Tribal” is the best I have, with “Don Cherry’s Roc ‘Em Shock ‘Em Hockey” a close second. “Abzan Aggro” is out of the question.
I’ve played this matchup a bunch and I don’t know if it’s good. Their threats are big, resilient, and annoying. The games are very technical, and you have to figure out what to play around. Usually you try not to get Roc’ed, which will lead to some counterintuitive blocks like Courser on Deathdealer. Sometimes they will Roc you anyway. Sometimes you will have a Hornet Queen.
Postboard games are hard because they board into Back to Nature and we board into $@(*#. The Spearmint Rhino is an engine deck and is sensitive to overboarding, but you’ve gotta take out some amount of Doomwakes and Eidolons. The whole thing is a difficult balance between preserving inevitability and shoring up the early game. Games on the draw are hard, too — to catch up to hands that curve from Cats into Rocs, you usually need to play two spells in a turn. As Evan Nelson explains here [http://legendstech.tumblr.com/post/107484379146/riding-the-dilu-tauntaun-a-trip-to-hoth-and-back], Thoughtseize is what lets you do that. We’ve been boarding more and more Thoughtseizes in against aggressive decks, and it is at its best against a deck with a delicate mix of threats and answers. Game one I make a Queen, and game two I Thoughtseize a cat and make some Coursers. In the end, his Junk can’t touch my Junk.
Round 6 vs. Yore-Tiller Aggro
He leads with Battlefield Forge into Mounta — err, can I play a Plains instead? Sure! My opponent looks nervous and under the age of twelve.
A brief aside about scumming (or whatever you want to call it, maybe a more neutral term is better). It is true that some of the people deserve to miss some of the triggers all of the time, and that all people deserve to miss some of the triggers some of the time. It is also true that reminding opponents for missed triggers is miserable, and that by letting people get away with it, I am both ensuring they’ll continue to do it and putting myself in a rough spot when my opponents don’t let me do the same. Whatever, it’s up to you.
He plays a Seeker and I block the Seeker with a Courser. You will often want to do this — if he Lightning Strikes the Courser, you’ve gained 6 and Time Walked him, which gains you a lot more. In this case, the kid has nothing on 4, so it’s not really a Time Walk. Around turn 7 I get bored of baiting counterspells and jam a Whip …
(Remember how the Burn decks last season had decent mana, a potent man-land, resilient threats, and scary and versatile spells? Me too! That deck was great. If you passed the turn, they’d kill you. If you pass the turn against Burn 2015, they untap, stare at your Rhino, and rue the day they sleeved up Jeskai Charm. And old burn couldn’t even beat a Whip.)
… Whip resolves. In game two he gets color-screwed off Blue and I Thoughtseize on like turn 5, revealing:
[image of]
Stoke the Flames
Stoke the Flames
Disdainful Stroke
Jeskai Charm
Treasure Cruise
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
Way sweeter than Jeskai Tokens, and certainly no worse. He does nothing and I win.
Round 7 vs. @#*!, I Got Paired Down
As far as I can tell, the whole phenomenon of “ID into Top 8” is as overstated as “Pro Magic player.” He easily handles my Junk and I look for a peer group to complain to.
Round 8 vs. The Bathroom Break
… So I should still be able to draw into top 8, right? I’m paired against some kind of cheap and dirty commie Red deck. A third party tells me it isn’t safe for us to draw, as the one of us with lower breakers might draw out. I have the higher breakers. “Guess that means we should draw,” I say. It works! I am a genius. My previous opponents all die before my eyes. I am an idiot! I make it anyway at 8th. I am a genius! It would’ve taken substantial genius to miss t8 in a small 8-rounder after starting 6-0, and I don’t quite get there.
I’ve known a lot of people who can calculate your chances of drawing into the t8, but none who can do the same while also factoring in win percentage against the last Swiss opponent, lost equity from being on the draw in the t8, possible t8 matchups, and so on. This would make a great Frank Karsten article, though to be honest I prefer his videos because his accent is soothing.
Quarters vs. Cat Tribal
I lose the first game quickly, then win the second game just as fast. I don’t know what Cat Tribal players are doing when they keep hands without early pressure, since their deck mulligans well enough, and starting with Anafenza isn’t the worst.
Game three gets hairy in a hurry. My hand is strong enough to repel the early pressure, so I take Whip with my t2 Thoughtseize. Then I stall on four lands for some time and decide to Wayfinder with Anafenza in play, exiling a Hornet Queen. My Whip joins my pair of Rhinos, but his monstrous Fleecemanes are impassable.
I pause and consider the situation, though not enough to come up with a plan. (Who actually comes up with good ideas when they tank?) I rue my friend’s advice to board more aggressively into an anti-aggro plan, because I have boarded out my “win conditions.” (What the hell is a “win condition,” anyway? It’s indistinguishable from “card I put in my decks.”) The turns pass like days in the Great-War trenches and I begin to dread “something that kills my guys” — Elspeth, End Hostilities, Duneblast. But at this point: what’s there to play around?
I draw and shuffle and play lands off the top and still can find nothing to break the stall, not that improbable when that’s one of two Hornet Queens. Some minor battle with Wingmate Rocs and Arbor Colossi peters out on the periphery like a third-world Cold-War conflict. I go down to fewer cards in Library and have the absurd thought: “What if I lose this game?” Then I find a Hornet Queen. Aside from my bad board plan, premature Wayfinder, and deadness to sweepers, I don’t hate how I played this game — Thoughtseizing the Whip was definitely right, and the Eidolons I left in did draw me into a win, eventually.
Semis vs. UW Control
Meanwhile, at the other tables, one of the best players has just been eliminated.
“What happened?”
“I punted.”
“How?”
“Played out an extra Courser and got Wrathed.”
“End Hostilities?”
“Yeah, I wasn’t expecting it out of his aggro deck.”
That should answer the question “Why the hell are people boarding in sweepers in their aggro decks?”
I’m given a plan for the semis by my friend, who died to the same player a few rounds ago. I execute the plan perfectly for game one and therefore lose. I decide to diverge and keep in some Eidolons and Doomwakes, which match up well against the UW deck’s plans of attrition and Elspeth. You might want to keep in Downfalls, but reacting to Elspeth sounds miserable.
Game two I force a mull to five and Thoughtseize a Devouring Light out of an opener of two lands, Light, Light, Ingenuity, because I am an imbecile. My plan to mana-screw a 28-land deck is looking really bad after he plays Ingenuity on curve, but my Eidolons are too much. I likely blow it in a number of other ways too. Game three I learn by Thoughtseizing Dig Through Time. The rest involves a Fated Retribution that kills a Courser, a Rhino, and a Prognostic Sphinx. Whip into Rhino ends the game.
I’m not sure what to think about UW Control. It can never win control mirrors, and it’s gotta be worse against Spearmint Rhino than UB. Perilous Vault is a scarier sweeper than End Hostilities, and Ashiok is a scarier threat than Elspeth. There’s also something sacrilegious about playing End Hostilities in a deck where it actually belongs — if he really wants to rock it, he should at least board into Battlewise Hoplites.
Finals vs. Cat Tribal
I’m on the back foot all of game one and screw up a couple of tactical points that are worth recounting in detail. The first is: I’m at 4 with a board of Hornet Queen, Sylvan Caryatid, Whip against his Rhino, Deathdealer, Lion. He attacks, and I realize I can’t trade my Queen with his Rhino because I’ll die to monstrous. I have to block Queen on Deathdealer, Caryatid on Rhino, and this is easily avoidable by realizing he had an Urborg and I could tap my Heath without fetching.
The next turn I cast another Queen and choose to block with it instead of some Bees. My reasoning is that I want it in the bin so I don’t have to worry about Anafenza, but I could have beaten that card easily. He plays a scryland and keeps on top. The next turn, I whiff on an untapped land to both cast Rhino and activate Whip, so I just Whip back the Queen, begin to gloat inside, and die to Bile Blight in a way that was preventable twice-over. Rob says, “That was preventable, by the way,” in unison with the self-loathing of my interior monologue. Cat Tribal tends to make the game too technical for my tastes. Fortunately, the nice gentleman piloting it is as tired as I am — as tired as Yossarian! — and more than makes up for my goofs with a bad keep game two, and a slam of Lilly game three when he could have played some removal. A Rhino or two later and he graciously applauds, which no one who knows me would ever do.
A few more comments before I close the Spearmint Rhino for the night:
Never before have I played in a Standard format where tactics are so subordinated to strategy. The games are both rich and dull, like a second-rate chess game beginning with 1. d4, a walk on the beach, an Ishiguro novel. There are a lot of decisions to be made and a lot of decisions to fuck up, but precision is so unimportant compared to accuracy. Most of the stronger players I’ve battled have made a lot of right decisions, but they have not known which of those decisions were important. Hence we get Whip decks with 2 Doomwakes, mirror matches where everyone leaves in Caryatids and Queens, people playing Jeskai Tokens at all. The emphasis on strategy implies deckbuilding trumps gameplay, and my win proves that is true; Spearmint Rhino must be good, as I am not. Yet I wonder if the current format brings out my strengths as a Magic player — a stress on including the right cards, or at least boarding them out for no reason; long games where neither player is thwarted or defined by sharp imprecisions, or at least I’m not; a more poetic play-style, based on feel, devoid of calculation, that clueless commentators exalt in Brazilian soccer players and pre-boom poker mediocrities.
That, and getting lucky as hell. Really, though, this Standard format is the most skill-intensive in years, at least judging by how badly everyone plays in it, myself included. I can recall fifty misplays I made over the course of the last five weekends, and any spectator could find hundreds more, but when they take a Hornet Queen off Commune and bin a Whip in the mirror, or you Thoughtseize them and see Hordeling Outburst, double Anger of the Gods, who cares?
As for the PT, I’ve wanted to go to Brussels since I read Heart of Darkness. I’d heard from one friend that it was the D.C. of Europe, which is how it appears in Heart of Darkness — gross economic inequality masked by the pretense of virtue in government work. Another said it was more like Cleveland, which sounds even better.
My trolly and combative personality means I get to be smug when I win. That kind of schadenfreude is at the core of every competitive endeavor and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. The best things in life are free — for everything else, there’s Magic cards.
CML
legendstech.tumblr.com
I think I should run Opportunity so that when people cast it I can say "You can opportunity, but you can't opportunafish"
Design a pun-cube, with an owner's manual pdf.
