My Marvellous/Mediocre Magic Thread

Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Using this for when I feel like documenting my thoughts on random decks/formats/tournaments, which is fairly often.

Let's start with a report from GP Lille:

Despite the format's fundamental flaws I was excited to play a Modern GP for the first time. I was treating it as a holiday; my deadline for the whole academic year was on Wednesday so any time I spent thinking about Magic, or anything else, was a luxury. A GP trip was a nice reward and a chance to decompress.

This meant that actual testing, something I don't do enough anyway, was out the window. Not to worry; I had the Goryo's Vengeance deck I'd been tuning for a long time, which I felt was pretty good even if you had to fight hard for the non-trivial wins. It would make for a draining day of Magic, but it was worth it.

Then Dredge happened. It was already a big thing on Magic Online, but due to price as much as anything else; as with the Death's Shadow deck, it was unclear if popularity in online leagues would carry over to large paper tournaments. It had some irl results but those remained low key. When the SCG poster boys ran over the Open with Dredge, I needed a new plan: it's a bad matchup, and hate would be everywhere. You can usually navigate around some disruption from Jund or whatever but, when they pack their sideboards with Nihil Spellbombs or (god forbid) Leyline of the Void, it becomes much harder.

I started looking for other options. Death's Shadow was good but hard to play optimally, and it was a known quantity now. Old faithful Affinity looked much better if everyone was shaving artifact hate to go after Dredge. Eldritch Evolution is busted, but all of the shells for it looked very clunky and I couldn't refine one without time. Would anyone find a list that worked?

I thought someone did. Watching a stream on a work break, I saw a reference to a Goryo's Vengeance/Eldritch Evolution deck and had to know more. Finding another stream where it was being played, I fell in love at first sight. Not only was it a beautiful concept, it appeared to fix a lot of the issues with my deck. I played it in a side-event to poor results but I was playing badly and it was clear something was going on there. I wouldn't have time to find it. This was a test of what I wanted from my weekend: play a fun deck and likely go down in flames? Or try to take it seriously?

After telling people how excited I was about my deck and the cool plays I was able to make, I chickened out and registered the most boring deck in Modern:








I picked Breach/Valakut because it's good against Dredge, handily beats the Jund/Abzan decks that are always popular while also doing well against Jeskai/Grixis, and has good 'random stuff' insurance. In return, you are really bad against Infect, Death's Shadow (which I expected to be very popular, and it was), and any spell-based combo deck. Playing Valakut is a commitment to flipping coins weighted a certain way.

The list itself is fairly stock; the left column shows the flexi-slots, where I opted for Spellskite over Anger. Spellskite is rarely bad, soaking up a removal spell for Titan or blocking, and lets you steal games from Infect/Death's Shadow/Burn; between these and 3 SB Explosives, I made my intentions clear. MD Baloth as a Pact target gives a lot of upside against Burn and Liliana of the Veil at low cost. P&K is just a good card that I want in the 75. SB Emrakul comes in when you want a fast Breach target and/or Titan isn't enough.

==

The venue itself seems fine, until we find ourselves sweating uncontrollably. I remembered the Twitter furore from the last GP Lille, when the AC wasn't working and multiple players collapsed from the heat; things hadn't changed much. The AC 'worked' this time and made a cursory effort at cooling us down but it wasn't close to enough and a few people at X-3 chose not to play Day 2 because of how annoying it was. My jeans + shirt combo wasn't ideal for the occasion.

R3: W 2-1 vs Living End

My tournament starts as expected when I whiff on Oath of Nissa and die after floundering for a while. G2 looks bad too when he has back-to-back Beast Withins for my lands, but I get to 5 and set up EOT Breach-Emrakul with the threat of Breach-Titan to play around Violent Outburst. He doesn't have it and I'm good. G3 is close until I draw a timely Relic; even then, I have to make sure I pop it at the right time and don't lose to double Outburst or give him a chance to rebuild. I give him a turn but he's burned through his cyclers and his hand is mostly junk.

R4: W 2-0 vs Flayer Abzan
R5: W 2-0 vs Jund

The reason to play this deck. Both of my opponents grimaced when I suspended Search for Tomorrow.

R6: L 0-2 vs BW Eldrazi/Taxes

R7: L 1-2 vs Ad Nauseam

G1 was my favourite game of Magic in a long time. When I mulligan into 5 lands + Primeval Titan and he suspends Lotus Bloom, I gave myself a <10% chance to win the game. I land a Spellskite but have nothing going on and he combos quickly, motioning as if expecting a scoop after I look through his deck. I know that most Ad Nauseam lists can't remove a Spellskite in G1 so it invalidates Lightning Storm, but he has Lab Maniac... he's already used all 4 Serum Visions so he can't draw a card this turn! He's forced to play it and pass, which wouldn't normally be an issue with Pact of Negation backup except that I can get enough lands to Valakut down the Maniac and steal a game I had no business winning.

Obviously I lose the next two anyway, because the matchup really is that bad.

R8: W 2-0 vs Elves

Dan Paskins would have been proud of this one

R9: L 1-2 vs ???

14086474_10157303543085591_5310669926841252501_o.jpg

Here's a fun exercise in opponent profiling! Most Jund players don't wear Aladdin pants. I was expecting some bizarre combo deck or something hyper-aggressive; in maybe the least surprising outcome possible, I get a jolly good Bogling.


R10: 0-2 vs Infect
R11: 2-0 vs Naya Zoo

R12: 2-1 vs Tron
R13: 2-1 vs Tron

These Tron matches were very silly and swingy. R12 G3 he has T4 Ulamog on the play, which beats everything except the nut draw. Luckily I have the virtual nuts, with T3 Breach-Titan putting him to 2 and forcing him to Ulamog both Valakuts. This means that any land is lethal for my backup Titan, and I hit.

R13 G3 I know I need a great hand to keep up; I look at Valakut, Mountain, EE, Relic, Spellskite, Breach, Emrakul. This hand looks awful but an average 6 without Breach and Titan/Emrakul (maybe exactly Emrakul) won't be good enough and this one does have it. His friends are watching and are visibly amused at my draw - why wouldn't I mulligan?! In the crucial turn I know Karn will come down and have to decide whether to commit a 2nd Spellskite. If I don't and he randomly has Nature's Claim (could easily be boarded in for dead Pyroclasms etc), Karn ruins me; if I do, I can't afford to miss for another turn. I play it, which was a mistake; he plays Karn and ticks it up, I EE away his Chromatic Sphere, untap and slam the 5th land for Breach -> Emrakul for exactly 6 permanents.

R14: 2-1 vs Infect

This one was exciting too. I steal G1 with a fast Breach, which I was very happy about. G2 I hem and haw before leading on Forest; this makes my draw worse unless he animates his Nexus, which he does and I get to blow him out with Dismember. When I follow up with Pia and Kiran Nalaar, I can taste victory. Hierarch + another Nexus lets him attack into my board; I block and sac to force a pump spell in back to back turns. Sadly I'm just drawing useless copies of Anger of the Gods, and the Nexus eventually does me in.

G3 was one of those games where I just felt completely lost; it's hard to remember and convey everything that happened. I Anger away two creatures on T3 and still have it all - double EE, Pact for Melira, double Spellskite. After some thought I lay EE on 1 and 2, fearing that I might need all my mana in future turns. Eventually we reach a weird stall where I have Melira and EE on 2, but he's beating me down with Blighted Agent + Pendelhaven and I risk losing to regular damage. I have to blow up Agent and my own Melira, and now Nexus presents another lethal threat. I find the 6th land for Titan but if I play it I can die to multiple pump spells on Nexus, so I have to play Spellskite and hope for the best. Nexus gets big... but I'm still alive! I draw a fetchland and play Titan, but it turns out I don't have lethal and he gets another turn; the fetch -> Valakut triggers plus Spellskite let me survive, but it's still alarmingly close.


R15: 2-0 vs Affinity

11-4

A strong Day 2 gets me 2 pro points (useless for now, but it's the start of the season so who knows!). I was worried that I'd do badly and not have any fun in the process, but I had some really interesting games to go along with the coinflips and did decently well. Onto the next one.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Some more sweet Sam Black decks:

Grixis Madness










The Grave Scrabblers didn't do anything in the videos and it felt like there was something missing, but the idea's cool.

Today he went off the deep end:

117 Card Valakut











This is basically a massive Cube deck. The idea is that the Primeval Titan + Valakut + acceleration and self-mill packages are both great but you can't support them in the same deck unless you take the radical step of lifting the 60 card restriction. Based on the videos and his comments afterwards, the final list would probably be in the 80-90 card range, but that's still a noteworthy departure from common deckbuilding patterns.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Also, I'll talk about the Goryo's Vengeance/Eldritch Evolution deck I really wanted to be good.

The basic shell is:










Lots of interesting lines:

- T2 Satyr Wayfinder milling Gbrand/Bobo, T3 Evolution into Ooze
- T2 Noose Constrictor/Troll, T3 discard Gbrand/Bobo, T3 Evolution into Ooze
- T1 Looting/Axe, T2 Tasigur, T3 Evolution into Gbrand/Bobo (can also go Tasigur + Evo in same turn to avoid removal)
- EOT Goryo's Vengeance on Tasigur, untap, Evolution into Gbrand/Bobo
- T2 Constrictor, T3 discard Gbrand, Vengeance it, draw 14, discard your hand to make a >16/16 Constrictor

There are other angles to explore: Bloodghast/Narcomoeba as Evolution fodder, turning Haunted Dead into a 6-drop (Grave Titan, or Godo which is conveniently a legend...), Golgari Thug/Stinkweed Imp as recurring fodder that also mills Gbrand/Bobo

The main issue in testing so far has been finding ways to mill Griselbrand consistently. In part you can solve that with the premise behind my regular list (which I wrote about in an article linked in my sig): making your secondary target good, in this case powering up Bobo via Life from the Loam. It's not a definitive solution, though. Also, space is at a real premium; it's hard to fit everything I want and, in sideboarding, it's tough to add in relevant answers while maintaining the structural integrity of the deck.


Here's a thought I'm working on atm:










When I saw Traverse, I expected it to spawn a lot of combo decks. I tried it in this shell to modest success, but now I want to give it another go. The issue with my old list is that you need to a. find Griselbrand, b. get it into play, and c. navigate around removal and - especially - burn. This is easy enough in the T2/T3 Goryo's Vengeance hands that give you most of your equity, but it's a lot more challenging with Necrotic Ooze. There's also no good tertiary reanimator spell that does what you want - I was reduced to playing Noxious Revival in the past.

This list aims to solve all that by playing a Jund-like game early on, eventually going off when the time is right. Traverse gives you an effective 5-6 Oozes without having your hands clogged with them, and it can fix your mana (letting you shave lands, though this isn't necessarily desirable) while also adding extra utility and making your SB creatures much better. Dark-Dwellers lets you chain Traverse/Kolaghan's Command or just flashback a Goryo's Vengeance (making it a kind of tertiary combo piece). The removal means that, when you do try to combo off, you might have more life and can spend it more freely.

The other nice thing is having MD cards which are fantastic in certain matchups: Darkblast against Infect/Robots/green creatures, Spellskite against Infect/Bogles/Death's Shadow, and so on. You're effectively pre-boarded against the grindy decks, which means you don't have to spend as many SB slots on them.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Made T8 of the WMCQ with Nahiri Valakut:








Continued my history of getting great draws in bad matchups with this deck

R1: 2-0 vs UWR
R2: 2-1 vs Death's Shadow
R3: 2-0 vs Ad Nauseam
R4: 2-0 vs Robots
R5: 2-0 vs Gw Tron
R6: 2-0 vs Robots
R7: ID
R8: 2-1 vs Jund
QF: 0-2 vs UWR Prowess
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
In the interest of balance: scrubbed the GP and got to answer 'What's your record?' a bunch of times :confused:

(and then watch a bunch of people I know win/lose playing for Top 8 in impressive/depressing ways)


Current Modern project:







You're not quite as fast as Death's Shadow but you're more resilient, have a much better mana base (and take far less damage against other aggro decks), and have some sweet SB options
 
O

ossa

Dom Harvey said:
In the interest of balance: scrubbed the GP and got to answer 'What's your record?' a bunch of times :confused:

(and then watch a bunch of people I know win/lose playing for Top 8 in impressive/depressing ways)


Current Modern project:







You're not quite as fast as Death's Shadow but you're more resilient, have a much better mana base (and take far less damage against other aggro decks), and have some sweet SB options
Click to expand...


Looks like a fun deck, what's the idea behind the one-of Goblin Guide/Kird Ape/Become Immense/Ghor-Clan Rampager? No love for Lavamancer?
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Ape/Guide are there as the 13th/14th one-drops. I'm not sure which is better.

Become Immense and Ghor-Clan Rampager each complement the Rancor/Growth/Boros Charm plan but the second copy is often too clunky. Just having one in your deck makes life much harder for Villain as playing around the wrong thing is disastrous. It's possible you want two copies of one or both; I definitely want the 2nd Rampager in the board at least.

This is trying to be a hyper-aggressive combo deck, the incremental advantage offered by Lavamancer doesn't fit into that. It's a possible SB option for Infect or other creature decks though.

==

I need to find a Standard deck for GP Warsaw. I played Froehlich's Aggro Delirium deck to a PPTQ finals yesterday and played it really badly; I didn't eat all day or monitor my insulin, which didn't help. The deck felt fine, and its best draws are unbeatable, but the midrange versions seem more solid. Both should be good against blue decks; aggro is better against Marvel (though that matchup is probably hard regardless; you can only play this deck if you expect Marvel to die down, which I do), Gearhulk specifically is great in the mirror but aggro is weaker there otherwise. I found myself boarding out Gnarlwood Dryad and Servant of the Conduit a lot; Tsumura's list at the PT had Advocate as a 2-drop instead, but also had a bunch of Lilianas which I liked a lot. The Copters were a bit hit-or-miss even though the card is great.

Other deck I'm looking at is BR Madness/Zombies, since it should beat up on the blue decks. I'd love it if I could justify playing Colossus though...
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Scrubbed out of GP Warsaw. Doing badly at back-to-back GPs is rough, not just because of the time/money spent but because I see people I know doing well and I want to be up there too. Lessons learned:

- I find travelling stressful/exhausting at the best of times, and drawn-out international travel with all the added complications is even worse. I need to look after myself properly, and I've been too careless about that.

- Although my prediction of metagame trends is usually on point - at GP London last year I played the Abzan deck that stormed the tournament and defined the format, at Lille I moved to Valakut when that was the breakout deck of the weekend, I thought two weeks ago that GB Delirium was the next obvious shift and that's what happened - I don't test enough to take advantage of that or make the next necessary step. I've mostly done well in tournaments I've felt prepared for, and it's clear I need that. There are reasons I haven't made that happen - lack of irl testing partners, reluctance to buy into MTGO, poor time management - but I don't have good excuses and should commit properly if I want to take this seriously (which I do).

To expand on this GP: I realized that GB Delirium was initially favoured against aggro and UW, but the problem is that GB is basically as good as it can be against UW already whereas UW has a lot of room to adapt: if they have Revolutionary Rebuff or Spell Shrivel the Ishkanah plan gets a lot worse, I got wrecked by Thalia, Elder Deep-Fiend sounds terrifying, you need to make sure you don't over-board for the tempo plan and get grinded down by Jace or a Thalia's Lancers package or w/e...


Plan for now is to dial it back a bit until the end of year to focus on my thesis, which I need to do anyway. The one event I want to invest time in is the RPTQ, which is by far the easiest route back to the Pro Tour. I'll try the Zoo deck I posted above, Affinity, and Dredge, but I imagine most of my effort will be finding the best Valakut list. It's the deck I know the best, I think it's consistently underrated, and I hope it will be even better for a RPTQ field where you see less of the random stuff that happens to beat you (e.g. Storm). The bad Infect matchup G1 is unfortunate but you can steal games and the deck is structured such that you can afford to board in a ton of cards. In return you boast a good Dredge matchup and are great against the tier 2 decks (Eldrazi, Robots, BGx) and stuff on the fringes (any tribal deck, Company/Chord).
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
4-3 in the online PTQ with Valakut; one loss to severe mistakes on my end

Deck has felt good in testing, I did decently well in the Leagues/PPTQs despite not playing much against my 'best' matchups (Bant Eldrazi, GBx).

I want to test Death's Shadow since players I respect are advocating it but it's bugged online and my physical copy is in Rotterdam for the WMC so...
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
2016 Magic Review:

The Magic year started with me trying to prepare for the Pro Tour. I was juggling academic commitments and personal stuff and wasn't quite sure how to prepare: to adapt a Rumsfeldism that's actually pretty insightful, I didn't know how much I didn't know.

First, though, I had a wonderful time at GP Vancouver. I visited a cat cafe, I went to the best gelato place in the world (and then went back, and went back again), got to see some of the region's stunning natural beauty, and enjoyed the city a lot as a tourist for a few days. The GP itself went well: my best finish at a GP at that point (...need to fix that this year), and in Limited, was a nice sanity check heading into the PT. I got to put faces to a few names I knew from online too; safra was a great host.

The Pro Tour testing process was a bit haphazard (see the report, which you can find in the link in my sig). I met the Scottish team for the first time and they were all cool. They had wisely all locked in on decks already, which meant there wasn't anyone to really discuss Modern with as I was flailing around looking for a deck. Inevitably I played Robots, which turned out to be a strong choice. The PT was a rollercoaster: a promising start on Day 1 went off the rails on Day 2. Despite that, it was a great experience and one I badly needed/wanted to have at least once. This year I can hopefully make a dedicated effort to get back.

(FWIW, my verdict on the US is that the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library isn't worth it and God help you if you want to get around Atlanta without a car)

Modern was stagnant for the next few months but I had a ton of fun experimenting with the Goryo's Vengeance/Loam deck: ultimately, the fun of Magic for me is not just the in-game tactics/strategy but the creativity, and this deck was sweet (and maybe good again now that Dredge has been cut down to size).

GP Barcelona was one of many comically unsuccessful GPs for me this year. I've made an effort to enjoy the locations so that I have a good trip even if the GP went poorly, and Barcelona makes that very easy. A few friends of friends have moved there and I can see why. For someone used to the Anglosphere model of city construction etc, Barcelona was like stepping into an alternate reality.

GP Manchester was strange (played a fun deck with no testing, started 7-1-1 and should have been 8-1, then couldn't win to save my life on Day 2), but I got to watch a friend Top 8.

Magic was on hold for me after that until GP Lille (see OP), where good times were had by all. Picked up the Valakut deck because it was easy, stuck with it because it was good and racked up some other good finishes with it.

Haven't played much the last few months outside of some more failed GP outings, but I'm looking forward to getting back into it for 2017.


2017 goals:
- Get back on the PT
- Improve at draft/Sealed
- Test and network properly
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
The PT is tomorrow and I'm excited to see if Standard is more diverse than advertised so far as I'm playing two GPs and a RPTQ in this format. The guys I know who are going haven't found anything good other than the obvious UWR Saheeli and BG decks (not I was expecting them to lol). Things floating around in my head atm:

- Marvel is still incredibly powerful and specifically great against BG but it's bad enough against the Saheeli decks to knock it down. I'm curious about the 4C Saheeli decks with the green energy cards that popped up at the SCG Opens: they play a bunch of Rogue Refiners and Cloudblazers and such but it seems like you're rarely winning a real game with that stuff and Marvel beats it head-to-head; if those decks can succeed, it feels like a 4C Saheeli deck with Marvel is just better if built properly

- Voldaren Pariah is great against BG, Prized Amalgam/Scrapheap Scrounger/Haunted Dead are great against UWR. The black removal is solid. There has to be something here but idk what the right shell is (the BR deck from before Aether Revolt was sweet but relied on Smuggler's Copter a lot)

- In the same vein, the UR Emerge deck that Levy played at the last PT could be good again? Feels easy to get beat up by Verdurous Gearhulk if you don't draw all your pieces though

- The limits of the format are defined by the mana, and the mana in Standard is weird right now: allied pairs have really bad mana, enemy pairs have great mana, three colour manabases are dicey, but if you put the work in you can play anything you want in five colours. In an artifact deck you have Aether Hub, Spire of Industry, Terrarion, and Renegade Map, giving a floor of 17 sources of any colour. You can play 8 Implements (R/W) and 8 Terrarion/Map to fuel some really fast Improvise starts with the best interactive cards from each colour?

- As a follow up, Inspiring Statuary is very silly and I hope someone breaks it
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Busted the RPTQ: made what I think was the right meta call and faced my worst matchups. The format's stagnation is demoralizing so I'm not taking the GP too seriously (I just want to play a US GP and have fun with Marvel) but I did get to try commentary for the first time which was a lot of fun (rounds 5/6); very eager for any feedback!
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Overdue updates:

- Went 10-5 with Marvel at GP New Jersey, format sucked and I misbuilt my deck badly but still had fun; North American GPs are a lot more relaxing for a number of reasons

- Split a SCG IQ with this little number courtesy of Zac Elsik and random forum people:










List needs tuning but felt really strong, so many decks still struggle to beat Thopter-Sword and having good removal and tutors for hate cards makes the deck a lot stronger
 
sigh

sigh

So I'm tinkering around with a Goryo's Vengeance list, on paper at the moment. Am I cray in thinking this card has some mileage in this deck?:
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
What are you hoping to do with it? The deck doesn't really need a sweeper (and if you want one you can play Anger of the Gods or something else that doesn't tax your resources).

Save it for dinging your Hornet Nest for 18 IMO
 
sigh

sigh

Thanks! I've started to come to my own conclusion to that regard in my first sets of goldfishing and play testing :). Collective Brutality has provided far more utility for the deck while fulfilling a "flexible discard outlet" or what will you
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
There's an amazing TO here who runs the biggest and best events in the UK and this weekend was one of an ongoing series, featuring both Legacy and Modern. I met Aston (the real one this time!) and also did well for the first time in a while.

Went 7-4 (weird tournament format - Swiss + 'extra' Top 8s) with Mono-Red Sneak Attack in Legacy, it's very mindless (which helps since I haven't played Legacy in years and was on zero sleep), gets a ton of free wins (via killing them on T1/T2 or just stopping them from ever casting spells via Chalice/Blood Moon), and is great fun if you like that sort of thing.










Chandra underperformed but there's not an obvious card to replace it with. I was thinking about leaning harder on the Sneak aspect with Show and Tell: my issue with the traditional Sneak and Show decks was that you're often spinning your tyres doing nothing and it's hard to get to 5 mana for Sneak + activate especially if your resources are under attack; if you have this much acceleration baked into your deck (Petal + Guide, the full 8 Tomb + City and probably Sandstone Needle), that's no longer an issue. Instead of Force etc. you can defend yourself through sheer redundancy (Show + Sneak + Breach plus cards like Chalice/Moon that threaten to end the game immediately). Not sure what this means for Inferno Titan though, that card was great for me.

Didn't know what to expect from Modern but made the Top 4 with this (first prize was a pair of paid flights/entry/accommodation for any GP so effectively a paid trip to Japan/Australia etc, finalists could have split so I effectively lost playing for the grand prize :():











W: Bant Eldrazi, Burn, Eldrazi Tron, Abzan, Humans, Faeries, Counters Company, (T8) Lantern
L: Humans, (T4) UWR Control

Sideboard needs some cleaning up and I need to figure out my plan for DS and control (DS might be a lost cause but control should be doable - storage lands? Dispel? more card draw?). There are a few different builds to try - one RPTQ list had Fatal Push and more Searches MD instead of going for maximum speed - but the basic core still feels great.
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
I thought I had a team in place for the RPTQ and I was hoping to play with them for the team GP... then they told me they already picked someone else, and won the GP with him (with his ~50% winrate doing its part), leaving me with no invite and no team. Luckily over the weekend I again won the first PPTQ I went to:









Deck is very strong but there's not much to say about it (other than Hadana's Climb being worth a try in certain Cubes). Meanwhile, I'm continuing to flog dead horses in Modern with Goryo's Vengeance. I tried my old Ooze deck with some updates at a local tournament and wasn't impressed; the format's moved to a point where Ooze itself is often too slow and vulnerable. However, some MTGO experiments have been more fruitful:









The Looting + Reunion + cycle lands engine finds your pieces with remarkable consistency, but I found I was rarely winning with Assault so I want to try lists that don't have as clear a Plan B and aim to directly tutor for Vengeance with Transmute (Shred Memory here but Muddle the Mixture is very appealing). Cutting Assault relieves a lot of tension from the manabase as well.

I also tried an update of the GV/Eldritch Evolution deck I mentioned in the OP:










Bloodghast jumps in as a resilient threat (I beat a control deck through Blood Moon and a flurry of Bolts by attacking with the same Bloodghast a bunch of times) that you don't have to pay for and can be instantly evolved into Ooze without being interrupted by removal. It's also great with Razaketh, which can get you out of some tough spots.

This deck is a hot mess and I'm glad I somehow 5-0ed a league with it so I can see people try to make sense of it when it's published
 
Dom Harvey

Dom Harvey

Contributor
Quick hits from past month or so:

- I lost playing for T8 of Nationals but went 6-0 in Limited somehow (including beating Nicol Bolas, the Ravager transforming twice in the same game)
- Scrubbed out at some GPs and will shortly scrub out of more
- Lost a PPTQ finals with Hardened Scales, then T8ed one with this little number:










With Griselbrand in play you dredge through your deck, regaining life from Brownscale each time until 2x Progenitus are the only cards in your deck, then loop Phantasmagorians with each other to discard dredgers + Progenitus + each other while activating Griselbrand and replacing each draw with Dredge 2 (Brownscale/Salvage), so you gain 1 life each cycle (8 life from 4 Brownscale vs 7 life from GB which is abbreviating Griselbrand here and not Golgari Brownscale so I should have just typed Griselbrand instead) for infinite life and never deck because you can always draw/discard/dredge Progenitus

(the original iteration had Emrakul/Gut Shot so you could actually kill on the same turn but putting Emrakul in your turbo-Dredge deck requires a bigger brain than I have)

This needs work but the shell is very powerful and gains a ton from Guilds (Mausoleum Secrets for GV, SB Assassin's Trophy). Also Necrotic Ooze + Doom Whisperer is my type of nonsense so I'm excited to try that

- I'm in Toronto now, come visit me!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top