New Matchup Primers and SoLaS Thoughts

My initial experiences on MTGO have been largely very positive. Once I learned the basics of the client and how my deck worked, things were pretty great. On two days in the past week or so, I sat down and played a GP worth of matches from the comfort of my bedroom. I can’t really put a value on the amount of extra testing I’m getting in, but it’s certainly more than the $0 I’m putting into the program now that I have a deck. I’m “going infinite” so to speak in terms of value in the Legacy Leagues, so unless I hit a cold streak or the meta shifts, my practice is paying for itself and slowing saving up for other ventures.

I say my experience has largely been positive because setting up a stream has been a nightmare. MTGO inexplicably stopped connecting on one of my laptops. I followed their recommended fix guide to no avail. Whatever, I have a backup laptop. I ordered a new battery for that and got sent the wrong part. Whatever, that’s annoying, but still fine. OBS (the streaming program) streams everything on my screen except MTGO. *tilt* What I’m getting at is the stream is going to be delayed a bit until my tech issues are resolved. I’m working on them, but Zapdos isn’t going to catch itself… I’ll probably give OBS Classic a shot in a few days and see if that works better.

As my apology for falling behind my anticipated schedule, I’ve vastly updated the matchup section of the site. You’ll now find brand new primers for Grixis Delver, Czech Pile, Sneak and Show, Turbo Depths, and RB Reanimator. Enjoy!


For those of you have been known me for years, my hatred for Sword of Light and Shadow in D&T is pretty well known. I think that card is straight garbage. It usually comes in for the same matchups as Rest in Peace, making it hard to get a creature back. Swords to Plowshares also exiles your critters, which also makes it pretty hard to get something back. That means you are playing the sword almost purely for protection, with the random upside of gaining three life. Cool. There’s a good reason why I pushed Sword of War and Peace so hard during the Miracles era. When I played Sword of War and Peace, that sucker was melting people left and right. SoLaS is just disappointing in comparison.

Andrew Calderon hyped up this card a ton in our interview, as did my friend Don Donelson, so I decided to give it another shot. I stand by all of my statements. Against decks like Czech Pile, Grixis Delver, and Maverick it comes in alongside Rest in Peace, and that was frequently awkward. Against Miracles and other Swords to Plowshares decks, it doesn’t really get critters back as intended either. In all of the games I have played with it, I think I have successfully returned a creature in about 3 games.

I say all of that, yet it’s still in my deck. I don’t think SoLaS is objectively a good card, but it fills a weird set of overlapping roles that no other card really does. Against Czech Pile, it is a really threatening card. It invalidates otherwise useful blockers like Baleful Strix while incidentally getting creatures out of range of red removal and shutting off Fatal Push as an option. Against Grixis Delver, it walls or pushes through Gurmag Angler, who is a problem for cards not named Mirran Crusader. Against Miracles, the mirror, and Stoneblade, despite being very noticeably worse than SoWaP, it still gives protection from white; that matters.

If you are lucky enough to start getting creatures back with SoLaS, you are most certainly taking over that game. Let’s make that clear. Chump blocking with Recruiter of the Guard and redeploying it after a SoLaS trigger does feel pretty great. Bringing back an army of disposable Flickerwisps is disgusting.

Even when SoLaS isn’t firing on all cylinders, the role it plays as a card is probably important enough to keep around. I don’t like this card, but I’m not going to ignore how useful it has been. I board it in very frequently, and I do often fetch it first when I board it in. I want to be playing SoWaP (I miss the OHKO with Crusader and the percentage points against combo), but I begrudgingly admit that SoLaS is probably correct. The board also doesn’t have room for two pieces of equipment, so doing something else like running Sword of Feast and Famine alongside Sword of War and Peace isn’t viable.

What’s the Play? #1 Answer

If you haven’t read the original scenario, please click here before proceeding.

Tricky Situation

The situation is pretty grim for our Turbo Depths player, to be frank. The D&T player has multiple layers of disruption on board and you are under a decent clock. Many players would “go for it” and make the Marit Lage in this scenario, surmising that things probably aren’t going to get any better. If you go for it, you could use Sejiri Steppe to push damage through the Mom and Flickerwisp on the following turn. This line loses to a Karakas, Flickerwisp, or Path to Exile for sure, and another Wasteland or Swords to Plowshares would be problematic, but perhaps not unbeatable. That’s about 15 live cards for your opponent, which is not great considering that they still have cards in hand and that your gut says they have Karakas.

The big question here is actually quite subtle “Why did the D&T player attack with Mom?” Assuming the D&T player attacks with Thalia and Flickerwisp every turn, the clock doesn’t change with that one point of damage. The D&T player is obviously not afraid of anything the Turbo Depths player can do. This means that they have at least one more piece of relevant action in hand, or perhaps something like a Mirran Crusader or Sword of Fire and Ice that would prove lethal with one more point of damage pushed. Alternatively, the D&T player may be pushing damage in the face of a card like The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale or Glacial Chasm, which would be unlikely, but not unprecedented inclusions in the deck.

After talking with Negator77 for quite some time, we believe that the optimal line begins with an Abrupt Decay on Thalia. Mana is really quite tight and you have an abundance of spells in hand. With Thalia gone, there is the possibility that you can wiggle through what is on board with the two Crop Rotations in hand. That means that the follow up play needs to be a Ghost Quarter on Wasteland to prevent losing a combo piece. This allows you to play Dark Depths without fear. The last part of this line involves using Surgical Extraction on your opponent’s draw step to fully remove Wasteland from the picture (you can tap Dark Depths to do this thanks to the Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth). This will also give you information about how safe it is to just make Marit Lage on the following turn, letting you know if you are going to need to save a Crop Rotation to get your own Wasteland to deal with a Karakas.

There are valid arguments for choosing a different Decay target, but mana is the biggest bottleneck here. Decaying a non-Thalia card also means that you would have to pay two life for your Surgical Extraction, which is not irrelevant at this stage of the game. That’s the difference between a 3 and 4 turn clock with what’s on board, and a 2 and 3 turn clock with something like a Mirran Crusader as a follow up play. While Decaying Mom is a valid line as well, fearing a Serra Avenger that could be both offensive and defensive, that is perhaps playing too scared of a 2-of in the deck and is a problem handled with Sejiri Steppe anyway. Reducing the mana bottleneck also allows a top decked Vampire Hexmage to be cast with a Crop Rotation open to take care of a potential Karakas (even after Port tapping a land).


That is our answer. Now, it’s important to note that the ideal line of play that you come up with after reflecting for some time and the actual lines of play you come up with in the moment aren’t always the same, even for veteran players. A number of misplays were made on both sides of the table in quick succession. Here’s what actually happened.

While he did Ghost Quarter the Wasteland and extract it, Negator77 did not end up Decaying Thalia. I believe he took out the Flickerwisp instead. My hand at the time was Cavern of Souls, Karakas, and Rishadan Port. I played the second Port and put the squeeze on his mana. A turn or two down the line, I end up Porting my own Plains due to a lag spike on MTGO. In a display of honor (and out of sheer curiosity about how the situation should play out) Negator77 responds as if I had ported his Thespian’s Stage properly. The stack gets four or five cards deep as we fight over forcing the Thespian’s Stage activation, and he accidentally makes a Marit Lage while his Wasteland is still on the stack, targeting my Karakas. Oops. We talked through the situation a bit more and realized that I still had the win regardless, but it was sort of an anticlimactic end to a really great game.

What’s the Play? #1

Last night I was having a blast chatting with Negator77 on Mtgo while playing the D&T vs Turbo Lands matchup. We had been chatting about optimal lines to take and giving each other feedback. For reference, here’s the decklist:

Blue Turbo Lands, Negator77

Creatures (4)
Vampire Hexmage

Spells (28)
Duress
Inquisition of Kozilek
Sylvan Scrying
Thoughtseize
Abrupt Decay
Brainstorm
Crop Rotation
Stifle
Expedition Map
Mox Diamond
Pithing Needle
Lands (28)
Bayou
Bojuka Bog
Dark Depths
Gemstone Mine
Misty Rainforest
Polluted Delta
Sejiri Steppe
Thespian’s Stage
Tropical Island
Underground Sea
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
Abrupt Decay
Pithing Needle
Flusterstorm
Ghost Quarter
Hydroblast
Karakas
Krosan Grip
Mishra’s Factory
Surgical Extraction

The board had gotten a little complex, which is normal for this matchup. D&T has so many angles of attack against the Turbo Lands strategy that it can be very difficult to wiggle through between various things like Rishadan Port, Wasteland, Karakas, Flickerwisp, and Swords to Plowshares. At one point he paused for a couple of minutes to think. While he usually felt pretty good about what lines to take, this situation was particularly tricky. Here’s the boardstate:

Tricky Situation

As the Lands player, you have a board of Ghost Quarter, Bayou, Thespian’s Stage, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. You hand contains 2 Crop Rotation, Surgical Extractoin, Mox Diamond, Abrupt Decay and Dark Depths. It is currently your upkeep, and your opponent activated Rishadan Port targeting your Thespian’s Stage.

On the board, you are staring down two Plains, Wasteland, Rishadan Port, Thalia, Guardian of Thraban, and a Mother of Runes that could protect a flier from Marit Lage. Your opponent has three cards in hand. The way your opponent has played suggests that they have Karakas in hand as well, but this is just your intuition.

What’s the play?

D&T Decklists, MTGO, and Crucible Snake

I’m back! Latin Academy, as always, was an amazing experience. It’s exhausting and intensive, but an absolute blast. It’s rare to have such a talented and motivated group of students, so I give it my all for a month every year.

Latin Academy Staff

While I was gone, a few other people picked up the D&T content production slack. Reddit user Douges wrote a great article on Rishadan Port that’s really worth reading if you’re unsure about how to get the most out of your utility land. For those of you that like Discord servers, we now have a D&T specific Discord server thanks to Reddit user StaticGripped. The invite code is EqTF7y5 if you want in.

Now that I’m back (and that ridiculously stacked Pokemon Go event is over…), expect new content again regularly. I bought D&T on MTGO, so I’ll start streaming within about the next week. If you want to preemptively follow me, it’s Deathandtaxesftw on Twitch. Link. I’ll likely have a couple of test streams over the next few days where I’ll try to figure out the mechanics of streaming and figure out if I need to buy any new equipment. I still have a decent amount to learn about both streaming and the MTGO client (like not using F6 when you have a Mother of Runes…), but I’m excited that I can sit down and play a GP worth of matches in a day without leaving the house. Once I have everything figured out logistically, I’ll put a stream schedule up on my new Travel Schedule Page.

As far as content goes, I’ll be playing D&T in three formats. Here’s the list I bought on MTGO for Legacy.

MTGO D&T

Lands (23)
Cavern of Souls
Karakas
10 Plains
Rishadan Port
Wasteland

Creatures (26)
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Phyrexian Revoker
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Council’s Judgment
Ethersworn Canonist
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Path to Exile
Rest in Peace
Surgical Extraction
Sword of Light and Shadow

This is probably not what I would bring to a paper tournament, as I’m partial to Magus of the Moon at the moment, but it’s something I want to try. I’m not actually convinced that SoLaS is good, but Andrew Calderon spoke very highly of it. I’m giving it a shot accordingly, but my initial 18 or so matches online haven’t shown me that it’s actually worth the slot. This is a safe and conservative decklist, not opting for any of the flair I’ve been trying out in recent times.


Roanoke’s 5th Vintage League kicked off yesterday, and I’m jamming the equivalent of D&T there too! I should probably give up and just play Shops, but I’ve had this idea floating around for a little while and wanted to try it.

Vintage Taxes/Eldrazi White

Artifacts (13)
Black Lotus
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Mox Pearl
Mox Jet
Mox Emerald
Mana Crypt
Thorn of Amethyst

Creatures (25)
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Fairgrounds Warden
Vryn Wingmare
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Reality Smasher
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (22)
Strip Mine
Karakas
Eldrazi Temple
Wasteland
Plains
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls

Sideboard (15)
Null Rod
Disenchant
Eldrazi Displacer
Containment Priest
Grafdigger’s Cage
Fairgrounds Warden

I think Containment Priest and Eldrazi Displacer are in many ways the weakest portion of the Eldrazi White deck. They are necessary in some matchups, but with the format moving towards Mentor/Shops dominance (20+% each) and away from Oath/Dredge (~5% each), it might be correct to try and hedge in other directions. This is experimental and likely not good enough, but it’s worth exploring.


I’ve also been playing a little bit of Modern. Brian Coval tore through the Invitational at the end of June with D&T, and the decklist caught my eye. I made a couple of very small changes to his list based on his recommendations and ended up with this.

Modern D&T

Creatures (29)
Blade Splicer
Flickerwisp
Leonin Arbiter
Mirran Crusader
Restoration Angel
Serra Avenger
Thraben Inspector
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
Plains
Cavern of Souls
Ghost Quarter
Horizon Canopy
Tectonic Edge
Eiganjo Castle

Spells (8)
Aether Vial
Path to Exile

Sideboard (15)
Grafdigger’s Cage
Relic of Progenitus
Burrenton Forge-Tender
Mirran Crusader
Stony Silence
Dusk
Sunlance

This deck has absurdly good percentages against the top of the format, and it often feels like a bye when you get paired against a GB deck. Death’s Shadow and Fatal Push look pretty silly when staring down a playset of Mirran Crusader. The issue is that this is a metagame deck rather than something that holds long-term promise. It lacks some of the raw power and utility that Legacy D&T has, so it isn’t generically good against the average deck in Modern. When your hate and threats don’t line up well against your opponent’s deck, it hardly feels like you are playing Magic. The deck isn’t quite proactive enough to beat a bunch of the “random jank” decks of the format. Then again, it’s also a deck very capable of doing “Legacy stuff” as my friends call it. I don’t know if you’ve ever played Restoration Angel alongside Flickerwisp, but you have an absurd degree of flexibility in resource denial and blinking timing when you have both of those cards.

I’ll play around with this deck a little more, but ultimately I think it’s not worth my time investment. The deck really lacks enough good 1 and 2 drops, which is a very bad sign for Modern. Modern also isn’t a format where you can necessarily specialize in a deck, at least not to the degree you can in Legacy. The long, grindy, and controlling game D&T wants to play isn’t necessarily the correct choice for most weekends given how aggressive everyone is trying to be in getting you dead.


I do want to highlight a legacy decklist that caught my eye. Ever since Renegade Rallier was printed, I’ve been wondering if Maverick might make a comeback. I’ve always loved a soft lock via recurring Wastelands, so I was hopeful that would be the thing that pushed Maverick back to the forefront. Obviously, it wasn’t. Then Top got banned, and Maverick lost one of its harder matchups. Again, still no Maverick. Then we got Ramunap Excavator… Huh, that’s neat. Is that good?

One of my local players, Connor McBroom, tried one in his Maverick list. He loved it and it was one of his most commonly fetched Green Sun’s Zenith targets. Fast forward two weeks. He now plays four of them.

Maverick

Creatures (22)
Deathrite Shaman
Birds of Paradise
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Scavenging Ooze
Qasali Pridemage
Reclamation Sage
Renegade Rallier
Knight of the Reliquary
Ramunap Excavator

Spells (15)
Swords to Plowshares
Green Sun’s Zenith
Abrupt Decay
Sylvan Library
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Batterskull
Lands (23)
Windswept Heath
Verdant Catacombs
Forest
Plains
Savannah
Scrubland
Bayou
Dryad Arbor
Horizon Canopy
Karakas
Maze of Ith
Ghost Quarter
Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
Bojuka Bog
Dark Depths
Thespian’s Stage
Engineered Explosives
Surgical Extraction
Path to Exile
Gaddock Teeg
Abrupt Decay
Blessed Alliance
Council’s Judgement
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Solemnity

To put it simply, this deck is pretty annoying to play against. Ramunap Excavator is good as both an offensive and defensive card. Offensively, it allows you to recur Wastelands to tax your opponent’s mana or gives you the ability to recur the Thespian’s Stage/Dark Depths combo. Defensively, it protects your utility lands against opposing mana denial. The snake gives the deck a good deal of card advantage and an additional angle of attack while also serving as a respectable blocker for many of the format’s smaller attackers. It also gets pretty cute with Horizon Canopy as a draw engine or Dryad Arbor for chump blocks.

Connor and I both think that the deck still needs some fine tuning, but the conceptual ideas and core of the deck are very strong. After watching Todd Stevens decimate with Azusa, Lost but Seeking alongside Ghost Quarter in Modern, he wants to try one in this list as a way to really go off. One Wasteland a turn is crippling. Three is unbearable. At that point, you can Waste your opponent’s fetch, forcing them to fetch a land that you can then Waste. Azusa might not be good on its own in many cases, putting it on the wrong side of playability, but the idea is certainly worth testing. The Ghost Quarter really ramps up the land destruction component of the deck as well, as three Ghost Quarters in a turn will quickly exhaust even the most basic-heavy decks.

There are a couple of notable exclusions from the deck, most notably Mother of Runes. Historically, Maverick has often played “protect the queen” with one big threat (Stoneforge Mystic, Knight of the Reliquary). This iteration of the deck is much stronger on the mana denial portion, and the cuts have to come somewhere. Once you trim Moms, going down another Stoneforge or two seems fine as well. It’s possible that one piece of equipment or the second Renegade Rallier should get the axe for the 4th Knight of the Reliquary.

The other notable exclusion from the main is Dark Depths. This deck *really* needs to curve out. Utility lands like Dark Depths and Maze of Ith don’t actually contribute to that goal. Many players will still play scared of the combo finish anyway off Knight of the Reliquary, so it doesn’t matter too much if it isn’t in the deck for game one.

In Connor’s words, the sideboard is an atrocity. There’s not a great balance for how many cards need to come in/out for each matchup yet, and some of the slots may not be correct. Solemnity is there as a deterrent to things like Infect creatures, Aether Vial, Chalice of the Void, Endless One, andUmezawa’s Jitte while also being a great combo with Dark Depths. Admittedly, it doesn’t work well with his own Engineered Explosives or Jitte.


I’ll put up an announcement once the stream is fully functional and go to go, but I look forward to chatting with all of you more on stream!

Thraben University: A One Year Retrospective

June 23rd marks a few important things for me this year: my birthday, the day I leave for my summer job at Virginia’s Latin Academy, and the one year anniversary of Thraben University. It’s been a hell of a trip for me, and I’d like to thank you, dear readers, for your support over the past year. When I first imagined this site, I expected to get traffic from a couple hundred D&T players…uh, it appears that I underestimated how much people would appreciate and enjoy my content, that’s for sure. I smashed most of my personal goals for the site. Let’s look at some numbers as of Friday morning (the 16th) when I first sat down to write this post:

  • 37,537 unique visitors
  • 173, 680 page views
  • 37 articles
  • 42 other pages of content

I could wax poetic about how pleased I am with those numbers, but I think they speak for themselves given my initial expectations. I averaged a little over a piece of content a week (ignoring the content I had in place when I launched), and I did not feel like I ever sacrificed the quality of my content in order to “just write an article this week.” My only poorly-received article was my guest article about the math of a 61 card deck. This discouraged me from doing collaborative work for a little while, but my podcast with Zachary Koch was a smash hit, so I’ll be revisiting collaborative content again in the future.

I’ve made a number of small changes around the site in the past two weeks. The home page has an edited logo that looks a little bit sharper (Thanks to Phil Park from Germany for that!). Some of the core pages have been updated a bit, including the decklist and FAQ pages. The Miracles matchup page is being adjusted to be a page on the emerging UW Control deck (I’ll update it more once I play more matches!), and I’ve removed most of the other references around the site to Miracles warping various deck choices.

While I’m largely happy with the progress of the site, I do think I failed to meet a couple of small goals:

  • The matchup section is still missing some common matchups (e.g. Delver, Sneak and Show)
    • Reason: I spent much of my time writing articles on decklists, spoiled cards, and tournament reports.
  • The “How to Port” article never happened.
    • Reason: I finally figured out how to convey the information, wrote it, and WordPress logged me out when I tried to save. /tilt
  • I didn’t start stream despite multiple offers to borrow the deck.
  • I didn’t pretty up the site.
  • I didn’t change urls to display something meaningful instead of random numbers.
    • Reason: I (unexpectedly) rewrote the Latin II curriculum for my county this year, which ate up a ton of time.
      Also, I may have messed up a few things with WordPress at some point that made my life more difficult…

That’s the past year. Here are my goals in the following year.

  • Gain high level proficiency with another deck.
  • Write at least three articles on that deck.
  • Buy/acquire/borrow a deck on MTGO once I get home from Latin Academy (mid-July)
  • Stream at least three days a week during the summer.
  • Stream at least once a week during the school year.
  • Become a Twitch partner.
  • Use funds from Twitch, donations, and winnings to acquire another deck on MTGO to increase stream variety
  • Add primers on at least five more matchups.
  • Keep the decklist section more actively up to date; include builds other than my own.
  • Do at least three collaborative pieces of content.
  • Write at least two heavily data-driven pieces.
  • Add some sort of recommended video section.
  • Make a more active effort to attend every reasonable paper Legacy event, including side events at Grand Prix or SCG events

If you’ve enjoyed my content over the previous year, get ready for a ton more! I love Legacy and the Legacy community, and I’m going to do everything I can to promote the format and make great content for it. That’s my promise to you. I have a couple of stretch goals not listed above, but I’m going to keep those close to the chest until I know if they are possible. I don’t want to make promises I can’t deliver on, but I have a few cool ideas floating around…

[shameless plug] If you’ve considered donating in the past but never got around to it, I hope you’ll consider donating or subscribing once i get that whole Twitch thing rolling. In addition to the cost of buying a deck, I’m probably going to need to acquire some nice headphones with a mic (if you have recommendations on that front, let me know!), pay the entry fees for events, and get flex cards for the deck. I’ll also need some artistic types to help me make some Twitch emotes for my stream once I figure out how that whole process works[/shameless plug].





At the one year mark, I’d like to thank a few people in particular:

Kerry Milan- You helped me launch this site and answered all of my really dumb questions about html and such. I couldn’t have done it without you. You also magically fixed the site every time it crashed. You’re a wizard.

Shawn French and Harley Cox- You two helped immensely with my travel plans and playtesting. Thanks for putting up with me every time I wanted to try a new version of D&T. I can’t ask for much more from my roommates. “Phil, that’s not a new deck. That’s just D&T with two bad cards…”

Elton Wong and Sean Brown- Recently you two have been invaluable in discussing the Red Prison / Dragon Stompy archetype, but more generically, you two have been instrumental in helping me find good lists to play and test against. Sean, keep up the good work on those articles!

Zachary Koch and Louis Fata- I bounced a ton of ideas off you two in preparation for a few of my bigger events. Thanks for being my sounding boards.

The D&T Community- Whether it was on Reddit, MTG:Salvation, or The Source, you all gave me wonderful feedback and ideas. Even when we disagreed, we largely had constructive and positive discourse; that’s more than I can say about many other Magic communities.

I’ll be taking a three week hiatus from content production while I teach Spoken Latin to Virginia’s finest group of Latin students at Randolph-Macon College (unless there are some sweet spoilers, then I’ll find time somewhere). When I return, I’ll be back with a vengeance. I’ve got a fever, and the only cure is more cowbell Legacy!

Interview with GP: Las Vegas Winner Andrew Calderon

Last night I had the pleasure of chatting with Andrew Calderon, winner of the Legacy portion of GP Vegas, about his deck and tournament experience. I played Andrew previously during SCG’s Baltimore Team Constructed event in round nine of day one. At the time, he was piloting a UW Spirits deck that was a twist on the classic UW Stoneblade deck. Unfortunately, neither of our teams ended up making day two, but we both top 8’d the Legacy Classic on the next day as a consolation prize. Andrew is no stranger to the top tables of events, getting 33rd in Legacy at GP Chiba, a finals finish at a TCG Invitational, and having two Pro Tour appearances to his name. Without further ado, let’s look at his list.

Andrew Calderon, 1st at GP Vegas

Creature (27)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Mother of Runes
Recruiter of the Guard
Mirran Crusader
Serra Avenger
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker

Instant (4)
Swords to Plowshares

Artifact (7)
Æther Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte

Land (22)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Cavern of Souls
Horizon Canopy
Karakas
Plains
Sideboard (15)
Sanctum Prelate
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Council’s Judgment
Surgical Extraction
Sword of Light and Shadow
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Pithing Needle
Path to Exile

While he had considered playing the UW Spirits deck at the GP, Andrew chose D&T largely for its superior consistency and his experience with the deck. He has been playing D&T off and on since Mangara of Corondor was a four-of in the deck. In his mind, the printing of Sanctum Prelate and Recruiter of the Guard elevated D&T from a good deck to one of the clear best decks in the format. Most of Andrew’s time recently has gone towards testing Modern instead of working on Legacy; while he’s typically a Scapeshift player, he’s been working with the lesser-known Death Cloud archetype. Andrew had time to play D&T at FNMs and such, but he didn’t have a real testing team prior to the event or anything of that nature.

While many prominent D&T players have been experimenting with splash cards, Chalice of the Void, and Ancient Tomb as ways to get ahead, Andrew really focused on the consistency of the deck in his deckbuilding decisions. Over the course of a long event, he valued being able to play Magic over anything else. While many of the lists I’ve been posting have been hedging against Storm and Elves, Andrew was more worried about RB Reanimator. It’s a deck that is explosive and relatively easy to pilot, a dangerous combination for success now that Miracles is no longer playing the role of fun police. He wanted Surgical Extraction in particular as a way to minimize the number of turn one wins his opponent could have. Most of his other decisions are pretty stock. He did cut a land, going from the normal 23 lands to 22, as he felt the deck could perform fine on 22 in most cases. That’s something that makes me a little uncomfortable, but it is by no means unprecedented. Then there’s the Sword of Light and Shadow

SoLaS is a card that I’ve historically considered unplayable and largely inferior to Sword of War and Peace. In the Miracles-era of Magic, it was common that your graveyard would be empty since Swords to Plowshares and Terminus were sending your critters elsewhere. The card advantage portion of SoLaS just wasn’t happening. Now that Grixis and four color control decks are prominent, SoLaS does deserve another look. It gives protection from Fatal Push, which is quickly becoming a format staple, while also allowing you to refuel. As random upside, it also pushes through Gurmag Angler, Baleful Strix, and Leovold, Emissary of Trest. Andrew brought in SoLaS against any Fatal Push or Abrupt Decay deck as a source of long-term card advantage. It was the card that over-performed the most for him over the weekend, though he did also have great things to say about Recruiter of the Guard. Speaking of… you know what’s great to get back with SoLaS?

As far as matchups go, Andrew admits that he received some favorable pairings. He managed to dodge most of the extremely unfavorable matchups like Elves while frequently getting paired against good matchups. Let’s take a look at what he played:

Day 1
(Bye)
5x Sneak and Show
Infect
D&T
Bant Stoneblade

Day 2
Burn
4 Color Control
2x Grixis Delver
Jund Lands (yes, just combine the good stuff from Jund and Lands)
(intentional draw into top 8)

Top 8
RUG Delver
Grixis Delver
UR Delver

Andrew’s only loss was at the hands of Sneak and Show, and he admitted it was to a misplay on his end. His opponent was low on mana, and he opted to hold a Karakas in hand. He thought it would be a good way to “get” his opponent off a potential Show and Tell. His opponent played an Ancient Tomb, dropped a Sneak Attack, and gave Andrew the business. Oops. He didn’t make that mistake again, and he crushed his remaining 4(!!!) Sneak and Show opponents. Luckily, 13-1-1 was still a good enough enough record to make top 8!

I you haven’t had a chance to check out his matches from the top 8, I highly encourage you to do so. He plays brilliantly and demolishes the opposing Delver decks. When I asked Andrew if he wanted to make any changes to his deck moving forward, he stated that he might not play D&T at his next big event, at least not if it is soon. To clarify, he’s 100% interested in playing D&T again. It obviously worked out well here! That being said, he feels that Legacy is such an open format with so many viable decks that there’s a tendency to metagame against the decks that have put up the strongest results recently in an attempt to get an edge. This often results in a bit of over-preparation for the deck that is perceived as “the best” or that won the most recent large event. People are now very aware that D&T has the potential to put up strong results, so there may be an increased amount of hate for the deck that could prove problematic. Your life as a D&T player is a little harder when everyone is bringing Dread of Night and Massacre to the table.

Andrew had two closing pieces of advice for newer Legacy players. “Know your deck,” was the first. Legacy, perhaps more so than any other format, rewards knowledge of interactions and rules. Knowing the intricacies of things like priority can be the difference between a win and a loss in Legacy. Knowing how your cards work, how your opponent’s cards work, and knowing your road to victory in a given matchup is key. At one point in the interview, I asked him if he had an interesting scenarios or rulings come up. His response was, “No. I’ve read the Comprehensive Rules. I wasn’t really surprised by anything.” He then cited an opponent who tried to Rending Volley one of his cards while he had an active Mother of Runes in play. Unfortunately, Rending Volley’s “cannot be countered” clause doesn’t actually get through Mom’s protection. Knowledge is power!

“Assess the metagame properly.” That was his second piece of advice. Andrew contributes much of his success this weekend to a few called shots. He believed D&T was a good choice for the weekend based on its current positioning in the format, though he had believed it was a dubious choice right after the top banning due to the initial resurgence of Elves and other fast combo. Obviously, he was correct. SoLaS was an incredible sideboard card choice given how Grixis Delver rose to the forefront of the format. He was right, and that’s a sideboard choice I hadn’t explored in the past few weeks (and believe me, I explored a ton of weird ideas!). Andrew felt that his graveyard hate cards were the least useful cards this weekend, though he 100% was happy they were there. If his matchups had broken in a different direction, he would have been glad to have them. That’s great insight; sometimes the cards that are good for you on a given day and the cards that are necessary to have are very different things.

Finally, Andrew wanted to thank Pro-Play Games for their support. He actually borrowed his deck for the event. It turns out Legacy cards can be expensive or something… Even the best pilots can only go so far without support from patrons, testing partners, and friends. Speaking of community support, mad props to Bob Huang, The Source, and Reddit for managing to piece together the top 64 decks when WotC didn’t publish them. Here’s the breakdown:

11 Grixis Delver
5 Show and Tell
5 Bant Deathblade
5 Elves
4 BUG Delver
3 Miracles
3 4c Loam
3 DnT
2 Czech Pile
2 Food Chain
2 BR Reanimator
2 BG Depths
2 Lands
2 RUG Delver
2 UW Stoneblade
2 UR Delver
2 Grixis Control
1 UB Shadow
1 Eldrazi
1 Infect
1 Aluren
1 Merfolk
1 BUG Lands

23 different archetypes in the top 64…Legacy is certainly a healthy format, and it looks like a huge swath of strategies are viable. Delver, unsurprisingly, is leading the pack, but I’m not going to complain about that. One thing to keep in mind is that at an event of this scale, the difference between top 8 and top 64 isn’t that huge. A record of 13-2 (39 points) was good enough for top 8 if your breakers were insanely good; otherwise that was a top 15 finish. The only 11-2-2 (35 points) was 64th place, meaning most of the people between had a record of 12-3 (36 points). One win (plus breakers) separates the vast majority of the top 64 from the cutoff from top 8. Yes, really, that’s how the math works out. Keep that in mind as you talk about the metagame and deckbuilding decisions in the weeks to come. I’d sleeve up the following to test if I were playing this week:

WW D&T

Creature (26)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Mother of Runes
Recruiter of the Guard
Mirran Crusader
Serra Avenger
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker

Instant (4)
Swords to Plowshares

Artifact (7)
Æther Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte

Land (23)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Cavern of Souls
Karakas
10 Plains
Sideboard (15)
Sanctum Prelate
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Council’s Judgment
Surgical Extraction
Sword of Light and Shadow
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Pithing Needle
Path to Exile

The changes from Andrew’s list are as follows:
Main: -1 Spirit of the Labyrinth, -1 Horizon Canopy; +2 Plains
Side: -1 Gideon, -1 Rest in Peace; +1 Containment Priest, +1 Ethersworn Canonist

While Andrew felt the deck could function at 22 lands, I’m much more comfortable at 23. I attribute many of my losses to not drawing enough lands over the course of the game. Given the mana sinks we have in equipment and Port, I’m fine with playing another land. While things certainly worked out on the combo front for Andrew, I’m a little nervous about the amount and ratios of combo hate he has. I opted to switch one of his Rest in Peace to a Containment Priest since it is strong against both Elves and Sneak and Show, while also having good overlap with most of the places Rest in Peace is good. While ANT was notably absent from the top 64, its consistent MTGO numbers suggest that it is still a fine deck choice. I threw in the second Canonist, as it puts a little bit of a strain on most combo decks of the format anyway. I’d also try to squeeze in another removal spell in the sideboard, but I’d want to play some games with the current list before making any more changes.


Friday is my birthday…and the one year anniversary of Thraben University! *party favor noise* Check back on Friday for a reflection on the past year as well as what I hope to accomplish in the year to come.

A Brief Primer on Red Prison

I brought four Legacy decks with me to Charlotte: Waterfalls (4-Color Cascade), Burn, Monowhite D&T, and Red Prison. I intended to play each deck for one challenge event, but ended up playing Red Prison in three of the four events since I enjoyed it so much. For those of you unfamiliar with the archetype, let’s look at my list to start things off:

Red Prison

Planeswalkers (5)
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Koth of the Hammer

Creatures (14)
Hazoret the Fervent
Magus of the Moon
Quicksmith Rebel
Simian Spirit Guide
Sin Prodder

Spells (23)
Fiery Confluence
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Ensnaring Bridge
Trinisphère
Blood Moon
Lands (18)
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
10 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
Kozilek’s Return
Leyline of the Void
Phyrexian Revoker
Pyrokinesis
Sudden Shock
Thorn of Amethyst

I based the list I ran largely off PinkFrosting’s recent 5-0 list, just tweaking some sideboard cards slightly. This deck has been called “Dragon Stompy” quite a bit, but since this version doesn’t actually run any of the trademark dragons like Avaricious Dragon or Thunderbreak Regent, I’ve just been calling it Red Prison. The core of this deck is very powerful. Chalice of the Void, Trinisphere, Blood Moon, and Magus of the Moon often effectively end the game on your first or second turn. Accordingly, you can mulligan very aggressively for powerful openers, especially if you know which pieces will cripple your opponent.

As an aside, I do mean that you can mulligan *very* aggressively. I took 17 mulligans with this deck over 12 rounds (plus a couple of playtesting games on the side) and still ended up with a game win percentage of ~60%. Honestly, if I could replay some of the games I lost, I would have mulliganed more. I kept many “reasonable” hands in my first event instead of trying to mulligan for stronger hands, and that may have cost me. Oddly enough, mulliganing makes your Ensnaring Bridge and Hazoret the Fervent better as well, which is an odd factor that I didn’t initially consider. This was my favorite example from the event of the power of good mulligan decisions: I mulled to four against an opponent, and my opponent said, “Oh man, I’m sorry. It’d be really impressive if you pulled off this win though…” Sure enough, my four card hand produced a Blood Moon, and my opponent flopped around while a Simian Spirit Guide beat him to death. Impressive indeed.

On that note, it doesn’t really matter what cards you choose to win with. The core shell of this deck is very good at crippling opponents, buying you time to win…somehow. The version I’m playing is pretty controlling, but it’s easy to get aggressive with things like Goblin Rabblemaster, Shaman of the Great Hunt, and Pia and Kiran Nalaar. I like the Ensnaring Bridge as a way to hate on Show and Tell, which is a rough matchup otherwise. Once you have a Bridge up, Chardra, Torch of Defiance and Sin Prodder will draw you cards and/or slowly bleed your opponent out. Both of those cards were so much better in practice than I imagined they would be. Sin Prodder is basically a color-shifted Dark Confidant, while Chandra is similar to Jace, the Mind Sculptor. While that’s slight hyperbole, the cards are very good at taking over games.

I did lose a few games to my own mistakes and poor sequencing, and I’ll be the first to admit that. This shell is extremely explosive, but that power does come at a price. Take Trinisphere, for example. Playing a turn one Trinisphere often feels like a double Time Walk for you…but it does make your future Chrome Mox feel terrible, and it does make your hand a bit harder to empty for Ensnaring Bridge. Ensnaring Bridge may protect you from opposing creatures, but it keeps your idiots form getting in damage as well. Sol lands and Simian Spirit Guide can power out an early threat, but they do make casting your double red cards a bit tricky sometimes.

Magus of the Moon and Blood Moon are simultaneously a combo and nonbo with your Sol lands. The obvious first level thought is that playing one of these cards leaves you effectively down a mana. In reality though, Moon is often (usually?) a good thing. A Moon will keep you from sacrificing City or taking damage off Tomb, both of which are very relevant as the games go long. Moon also helps you to get double red, which is more of a concern than you might think in the early turns of the game. It’s also an insurance policy against annoying lands like Rishadan Port and Wasteland that can really disrupt your gameplan. It also turns your colorless lands into Mountains for synergy with Koth of the Hammer.

Of the maindeck cards, I am 100% comfortable with 57 of them. Quicksmith Rebel, Koth of the Hammer, and Hazoret the Fervent are probably the three most questionable/replaceable cards in the maindeck. All of these cards serve a unique purpose and fill a niche role, but are perhaps not essential to the deck. The deck is a little glutted at the 4-drop slot, so I could see wanting a little more early interaction. I’ve seen Magma Jet floating around as an option that can snipe an early creature while also providing some card selection. I’m not too keen on that card personally due to its objectively low power level and upside, but I get it. I do also think that other four drops like Avaricious Dragon or Pia and Kiran Nalaar are worthy of consideration. I also would consider promoting Sudden Shock to the maindeck. I think that card is criminally underplayed for how good it is at wrecking Delvers and friends.

On the subject of four drops, Fiery Confluence is a stupid Magic card. Unlike other modal cards like Cryptic Command where you have to make a different choice for each mode, you are allowed to make the same choice multiple times with Fiery Confluence. That means that this is a split card that can: wipe the board, destroy a bunch of artifacts, dome your opponent for six, or some combination of those things. This card stabilizes the board, answers problem cards, and closes the game. That’s amazing flexibility, and I attribute many of my wins to savage blowouts with this card. “I’ll blow up your Vial and do two damage to each creature.” “I’ll blow up both of your Mox Diamond and do two to you.” You get the idea.


Red Prison Sideboard

Sideboard (15)
Kozilek’s Return
Phyrexian Revoker
Pyrokinesis
Sudden Shock
Leyline of the Void
Thorn of Amethyst

Conceptually, I wanted to do four primary things in building the sideboard for the deck:

1. Deal with graveyards, an axis on which the deck has no other real ability to fight.
2. Deal with creatures, especially those of Delver and D&T.
3. Fill holes in a few other matchups of your choice.
4. Have seven “fair and reasonable” cards to bring in for matchups where Chalice and Trinisphere are bad.

Since this is a Chalice deck, Faerie Macabre and Leyline of the Void are the two primary options for strong grave hate. Faerie is a bit better with Ensnaring Bridge since you can discard it at any time, and is better if it is drawn after your opening hand. Leyline of the Void will be a more impactful card in most cases if it is in your opener and a more permanent hate card. I think both are very reasonable. I opted for Leyline given how willing I already am to mulligan looking for a good hand.

I’ve been really hot for Kozilek’s Return for ages. That card has crushed my dreams on so many occasions that I tend to throw it in most red decks I play. It dodges cards that otherwise might nullify red removal like Mother of Runes or Hydroblast due to its Devoid nature. It’s also an instant, meaning it can snag creatures in response to equipping or catch man lands like Mishra’s Factory. That being said, being Devoid is not necessarily a bonus when you are playing a set of Chrome Mox. Playing two was probably a mistake, and I’ll probably switch one to a Pyroclasm,Volcanic Fallout, Sudden Demise, or a second Pyrokinesis next time.

I see many people playing four Sulfur Elemental in the slots where I have sweepers, and I think that’s a mistake. I think the metagame is too wide open right now to be playing that specialized degree of hate, especially with Mentor Miracles being dead (or in a much worse state at the very least). It’s probably worth losing a few percentage points against D&T to pick up points against other creature decks like Elves with more generic sweepers. I also don’t think the D&T matchup is the worst thing in the world. This red deck certainly has more game against it than other iterations using the same shell. Fiery Confluence is a hell of a drug, and it will get out out of a surprisingly bad situation if you are able to cast it. Similarly, Ensnaring Bridge makes it very hard for your opponent to do anything productive unless they have a Flickerwisp.

I think the final few slots of the sideboard need to address general holes in your game. I opted to fight against combo decks and Burn with a set of Thorn of Amethyst. There’s probably an argument for these to be Sphere of Resistance to hate on Elves and Food Chain as well, but I liked the idea of curving Thorn into Sin Prodder or Magus too much to make that change. I’d probably consider playing three Thorns and a second Phyrexian Revoker next time though; Revoker is a great way to stop opposing planeswalkers, which are a big problem when you are stuck behind your own Ensnaring Bridge. I’ve seen people throwing in Zuran Orb for Burn or Karakas for Sneak and Show in these slots as well. I don’t like Zuran Orb in a land-light deck, and I’m not a fan of Karakas in a Blood Moon deck, but I understand the battles that are being fought with those cards.


I really enjoyed playing this deck, and I’ll probably mess around with it a bit more. Don’t worry, I’ll still be on D&T most of the time, but after spending weeks testing builds to varying degrees of success, I wanted a bit of a break. I’m still relatively new to this deck (I’ve probably played about 100 games), but I think I’m starting to get a good feel for the sequencing and boarding. For those of you who have been playing it for longer than I have, I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice!

Building a Gauntlet and Preparing for GP Vegas

Have I mentioned that Legacy is great right now? I have? Oh, well…it’s still true! We’ve seen quite a bit of innovation and many interesting decks arise after the death (?) of Miracles. It’s about time, if you haven’t started already, to start doing some serious testing for Vegas. I recommend building a gauntlet.

For the uninitiated, a gauntlet is a collection of decks you test against. These are frequently proxied for Legacy testing, as it’s somewhat difficult to build a gauntlet given the price point of doing so and the huge overlap between blue decks. You run various decks through the gauntlet, trying to determine the viability of your deck choice as well as the positive and negative matchups for your deck. Decks that perform poorly against the gauntlet are unlikely a good choice for a large event like Vegas. By testing against the gauntlet, you can get a good idea of how to adjust your maindeck and sideboard to be optimally prepared for the event. The gauntlet size will vary depending on how much time you have to test, but I recommend something like the following as a representative gauntlet of the format as is:

Clear Players
Grixis Delver
Show and Tell
ANT
Elves

Other Players
UW Control / “Miracles”
D&T
A BUG Deck

Underrated Decks
Red Prison
Bant or 4 Color Deathblade

If you don’t have much time to test (or multiple, dedicated testing partners), I’d focus on testing against the Clear Players category. Grixis Delver is likely going to be the most popular deck choice moving forward (at least in the short term), and it’s probably sitting somewhere on the order of 10-12% of the metagame depending on where/how you get your data. If your deck performs very poorly against Grixis Delver, you really need a good reason to be playing the deck. Similarly, if your deck has unfavorable matchups against two or three of the decks in that first category, you may want to reconsider your deck choice or adjust some cards to compensate.

The Other Players category contains decks that I believe will be popular. The UW Control deck might be a shell of the former glory that was Miracles, but it is certainly powerful enough to add to your gauntlet.

UW Control, Anuraag Das

Lands (20)
Arid Mesa
Flooded Strand
Island
Plains
Polluted Delta
Tundra
Volcanic Island

Creatures (6)
Monastery Mentor
Snapcaster Mage

Spells (34)
Brainstorm
Counterspell
Force of Will
Ponder
Portent
Predict
Supreme Verdict
Swords to Plowshares
Terminus
Unexpectedly Absent
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sideboard (15)
Disenchant
Ethersworn Canonist
Flusterstorm
Izzet Staticaster
Pyroblast
Surgical Extraction
Vendilion Clique

Various configurations of the deck have been putting on very consistent results online, and it’s impossible to ignore at this point. I’ve spent a good chunk of time this week lurking in various Legacy streams, and this deck is everywhere. The deck takes some getting used to pilot, so don’t just try to play it just like you did Miracles (hint: Portent can target your opponent too to put their dead draws on top of their deck). It’s still unclear which deck configuration is correct, but most of them seem pretty solid. If you can’t get someone who can competently pilot it to test against, I’d at least recommend watching some of the good players stream some matches. Like Anuraag Das, who did a sweet podcast this week on “Miracles” and the banning of Top.

I still think that D&T is somewhat poorly positioned, but I do expect the deck to be out in force nevertheless. The community is really torn on what direction to take the deck. Bahra and I have been trying 3 color builds, and he went 21-4 across 5 league with this.

3-Color Chalice D&T

Lands (24)
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Karakas
Plains
Plateau
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Windswept Heath

Creatures (23)
Flickerwisp
Magus of the Moon
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Palace Jailer
Phyrexian Revoker
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Spells (13)
Dismember
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Chalice of the Void
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Cunning Sparkmage
Ethersworn Canonist
Faerie Macabre
Mindbreak Trap
Orzhov Pontiff
Palace Jailer
Surgical Extraction
Sword of War and Peace

I’ve been trying very similar lists recently, opting to try out Blessed Alliance in the slot where he has Dismember. I also think one Scrubland is very reasonable given how powerful Pontiff is in certain matchups. This list is very good, but playing three colors does come with a price. This list is much more vulnerable to Wasteland (and other effects which prey on nonbasics) than other versions of D&T, which run about 7 more basic lands. Somewhat related, this build does go up to the 24th land and drops two of the Ports due to the necessity for squeezing in a few more colored sources.

BW D&T

Lands (21)
Bayou
Karakas
Marsh Flats
Plains
Polluted Delta
Scrubland
Swamp
Verdant Catacombs
Wasteland
Windswept Heath

Creatures (28)
Dark Confidant
Deathrite Shaman
Mother of Runes
Serra Avenger
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Tidehollow Sculler
Vryn Wingmare

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Light and Shadow
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Faerie Macabre
Orzhov Pontiff
Disenchant
Fatal Push
Council’s Judgment
Perish
Rest in Peace
Grafdigger’s Cage
Pithing Needle

Tamyra Shigeyuki had an interesting take on a WB build, opting to max out on disruption via Tidehollow Sculler and Vryn Wingmare. I think his list will eat the unfair decks alive, but I feel like it will struggle against more fringe strategies without Flickerwisp as a catch all answer. It’s also going to be soft to creature-based decks that can ignore the taxation. I took this list for a spin on Thursday, and I got crushed by Burn, Eldrazi, and Merfolk, only managing to take a win vs Grixis Control. I just died to creatures three rounds in a row, as I didn’t have any good stabilizing bodies like Mirran Crusader and Serra Avenger. Council’s Judgment also can quickly become uncastable with multiple tax effects in play.

WW D&T

Spells (13)
Aether Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Council's Judgement
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte

Creatures (25)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Phyrexian Revoker
Serra Avenger
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader
Eight and a Half Tail
Gisela the Broken Blade
Lands (22)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas
Cavern of Souls
10 Plains

Sideboard (15)
Ethersworn Canonist
Containment Priest
Path to Exile
Rest in Peace
Cataclysm
Mirran Crusader
Pithing Needle
Grafdigger's Cage

Michelangelo Scarmato’s list from Ovino had some spice, including maindeck Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, Council’s Judgment, and Gisela, the Broken Blade. I think that playing 22 lands is a little suspect, especially if you want to run a few more expensive spells or hold up mana for Eight-and-a-Half-Tails. Gisela is a card that I’ve really enjoyed playing in the past, and I’ve actually played it in Vintage as well, as weird as that sounds. It’s awkward that it dies to Bolt, but offensively and defensively, it is otherwise quite good. Regardless, experimentation is happening, and maybe people will have it all worked out by the GP.

Red Prison, 5-0 by Pinkfrosting

Planeswalkers (5)
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Koth of the Hammer

Creatures (14)
Hazoret the Fervent
Magus of the Moon
Quicksmith Rebel
Simian Spirit Guide
Sin Prodder

Spells (23)
Fiery Confluence
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Ensnaring Bridge
Trinisphère
Blood Moon
Lands (18)
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
10 Mountain

Sideboard (15)
Kozilek’s Return
Leyline of the Void
Phyrexian Revoker
Pyrokinesis
Sudden Shock
Thorn of Amethyst
Zuran Orb

I think the Red Prison deck is a real sleeper pick at the moment. In the past, I had dismissed these strategies as being very inconsistent, but this version feels a bit smoother. The exact maindeck has 5-0’d a handful of events at this point. Games are often (realistically) decided within the first three turns with this deck. This means that your mulligans decisions and initial sequencing matter quite a bit. Beyond that, your decisions are largely dictated by playing the spells you rip off the top with little room for your skill and format knowledge to give you an edge. For that reason, I don’t think too many people will switch to the deck if they aren’t already on it. That’s not to say that the deck is without decisions to make. You do have to decide how all-in you are willing to go on the first turn. There are some tricky sequencing situations to navigate through so you don’t lock yourself under your own Trinisphere or Blood Moon. Fiery Confluence has been my favorite card in this shell, as its flexibility is superb. While this deck is a control deck, when you draw multiple Confluences, you can turn a game around extremely quickly. Six to the dome for one card is an absurd rate, and if your opponent has taken some incidental damage from your other cards, two Confluences often close the game. I also cannot overstate how good Fiery Confluence is against D&T. It’s a split card that does some amount of board sweeping and artifact cleanup, depending on the situation. That’s absurd.

The sideboards are a bit in flux for obvious reasons, but I think it’s fine to move away from the Surfur Elemental heavy boards of the past for more generic sweeper effects. Elves and Delver decks are popular right now, so I like the cards like Kozilek’s Return and Pyrokinesis much better.

There are other ways to build off the core of this shell, like this:

Dragon Stompy

Lands (18)
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
10 Mountain

Creatures (20)
Goblin Rabblemaster
Magus of the Moon
Shaman of the Great Hunt
Simian Spirit Guide
Sin Prodder
Thunderbreak Regent

Spells (22)
Magma Jet
Fiery Confluence
Blood Moon
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Trinisphere
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Sideboard (15)
Phyrexian Revoker
Scab-Clan Berserker
Pyroblast
Pyrokinesis
Shattering Pulse
Sudden Demise
Frenzied Fugue
Thorn of Amethyst
Chandra, Pyromaster

I haven’t actually played any games with this list yet, but here’s what I speculate based on my experiences with the Red Prison deck. The Red Prison deck can be a little slow at closing out games. Against combo decks, that can give them time to draw out of your hate or make enough land drops to power through. This list will close out games after the hate is dropped. Goblin Rabbermaster is a swift clock when left unchecked, and it’s particularly brutal alongside Shaman of the Hunt. I’d probably want to squeeze a Pia and Kiran Nalaar in here somewhere, perhaps over the suspect Magma Jet. I mean…I get that it is a removal spell that provides some selection, but this is Legacy! Legacy, man! We can do better than Magma Jet.

4 Color Deathblade, Maxtortion

Lands (20)
Flooded Strand
Polluted Delta
Scalding Tarn
Scrubland
Tropical Island
Tundra
Underground Sea
Wasteland

Creatures (19)
Deathrite Shaman
Leovold, Emissary of Trest
Noble Hierarch
Stoneforge Mystic
True-Name Nemesis
Vendilion Clique

Spells (21)
Abrupt Decay
Brainstorm
Daze
Force of Will
Swords to Plowshares
Batterskull
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Flusterstorm
Krosan Grip
Meddling Mage
Surgical Extraction
Thoughtseize
Zealous Persecution

I have my eye on this deck and other similar ones. The data Julian collected from MKM Frankfurt showed that it had the highest win percentage of the event. I’ve only played a handful of games with this deck, but it feels pretty resilient and flexible. The one-two punch of a mana dork into a three drop is a solid plan against the fair decks of the format. The sideboard is geared largely to improve the combo matchups, as the deck doesn’t run any other disruption in the main (e.g. Spell Pierce) to supplement Daze and Force of Will.


I suppose that was my long-winded way of talking about my thoughts about the format right now. Obviously, there are plenty of other decks that you could test against. Burn and Eldrazi are two notable omissions from my gauntlet. Those decks are likely going to be common, but they haven’t changed too much in the past few weeks. The testing experience you already have against those decks will likely carry you through the matchups. I think it’s more important to spend time testing elsewhere at the moment.

I played in a small local EE Silver event this weekend. I thought D&T was very poorly positioned locally, so I swapped to Food Chain at the last moment. I top 8’d, but was relatively unimpressed by the deck this time around. My wins were largely based on misplays and poor deckbuilding choices of my opponents rather than the strength of my deck. I lost to my roommate on Bomberman for the second tournament in a row, so I have no shot of talking him out of playing that terrible deck. I got locked under a Chalice in two of three games and just died. Sigh. Chalice of the Void is a hell of a card. Maybe I should play that in D&T…oh wait, I already am!

Anyway, I’ll be in Charlotte next weekend to run a bunch of Legacy Challenges and trade for some staples to finish out a few more Legacy decks. I’m having quite a bit of fun experimenting, so I’ll probably bring four different decks to play around with. If you see me, feel free to say hi and we can shoot the bull about Legacy.

Legacy is Amazing! D&T…Not So Much!

I don’t consider myself an excellent deckbuilder. I am, however, an amazing tinkerer. Given a starting point, I can run with an idea, adapt it, and tune it well. That’s one of my biggest strengths as a player. That’s partially why D&T is appealing to me as a deck choice; I’m great at getting a read on the format and adjusting appropriately. Right now, the format is open, with tons of room for innovation and experimentation. I’ve probably had more fun playing Legacy in the past month than I have had in years. I’ve seen all sorts of crazy and interesting decks come out of the woodwork, and I’ve taken bits and pieces of what I’ve seen here and there to heart. As a player, the Top ban feels great to me, and I love what it has done to the format.

That being said, the Top ban really hurt D&T as an archetype. My initial advice after the ban was “Don’t play traditional D&T.” I stick by those words. Let me show you what I mean.

Phil Gallagher, 3-Color Taxes. 4th at a Team Constructed Event

Creatures (23)
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Magus of the Moon
Mother of Runes
Orzhov Pontiff
Palace Jailer
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (24)
Plains
Arid Mesa
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Marsh Flats
Plateau
Rishadan Port
Scrubland
Wasteland
Windswept Heath
Karakas

Spells (13)
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Chalice of the Void
Sword of Fire and Ice
Blessed Alliance
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Sword of War and Peace
Ethersworn Canonist
Containment Priest
Cunning Sparkmage
Manic Vandal
Mirran Crusader
Orzhov Pontiff
Palace Jailer
Blessed Alliance
Surgical Extraction

Bahra, 3-Color Taxes. 5-0 on MTGO

Creature (23)
Flickerwisp
Magus of the Moon
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Palace Jailer
Phyrexian Revoker
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Instant (2)
Dismember

Artifact (11)
Batterskull
Chalice of the Void
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Aether Vial

Land (24)
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Karakas
Plains
Plateau
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Windswept Heath
Sideboard (15)
Palace Jailer
Containment Priest
Cunning Sparkmage
Ethersworn Canonist
Faerie Macabre
Mindbreak Trap
Orzhov Pontiff
Surgical Extraction
Sword of War and Peace

Christian Reinhard, RW Taxes, 5th Place at Lucerne

Creatures (26)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Mother of Runes
Flickerwisp
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Sanctum Prelate
Mirran Crusader
Phyrexian Revoker
Magus of the Moon

Instants (4)
Swords to Plowshares

Artifacts (7)
Aether Vial
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa's Jitte
Batterskull
Lands (23)
Plateau
Wasteland
Karakas
Rishadan Port
Cavern of Souls
Arid Mesa
Horizon Canopy
Plains

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Manriki-Gusari
Ethersworn Canonist
Containment Priest
Faerie Macabre
Rest in Peace
Crackdown
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Council's Judgment
Cataclysm

Do you notice the common thread here? It’s Moon Man. Magus of the Moon is the card that I attribute most of my wins to in the past few weeks. I was going to write a tournament report for the Team Constructed event I played; however, I realized that it just would have been a love letter to Magus, with a slight aside for an amusing anecdote about a Ruric Thar, the Unbowed being forced to attack into my Mother of Runes wielding Umezawa’s Jitte turn after turn. Magus has locked out so many of my opponents, and gotten me out of a few spots that I considered largely unwinnable. Combined with Chalice of the Void, the version of D&T that Bahra and I are both messing around with has a much greater ability to lock opposing decks out of the game than previous iterations of the deck. Both versions are heavily geared to beat Elves and Storm, while not giving up too many percentage points elsewhere. Losing Swords to Plowshares is a very real cost though, and various workarounds are all lackluster in some way.

I have played a ton of shameful, terrible cards in the past few weeks. I’ve registered lists with Basilisk Collar, Ajani Vengeant, Ancient Tomb, Dismember, and Thalia, Heretic Cathar, to name a few. Why am I trying all of these oddities? Because normal, monowhite D&T isn’t a clear Tier 1 deck anymore. It does not have good matchups against the field. While it probably isn’t a bad deck, I do not recommend taking it to a tournament at this time if you want to maximize your chance of winning (unless you are *extremely* experienced with the deck).

I had previously written a long explanation on why and how that was true, and that was the crux of this article. Then Julian Knab put out one of the most impressive, data-driven articles that I’ve ever read. I now had the data necessary to back up my intuition and claims. Here’s the link.. I suggest that you take the time to read this article if you are a serious Legacy player (and while you are there, the rest of his content is top-notch as well…). If nothing else, please take a moment and take a look at the D&T win percentage chart about halfway down the page. What immediately follows is an extension of the things Julian wrote and the data that his team collected.

D&T had an abysmal showing in Frankfort, with a 41% win rate across 28 players and 199 matches. That’s a large datapool, so the results aren’t to be dismissed as simply a bad day for one or two pilots. What’s further disconcerting is that many of the matchups that many pilots perceive as positive for D&T went terribly. D&T had a 25% win rate against Grixis Delver and 38% win rate against ANT. I’ve always regarded Grixis Delver as an even or slightly favorable matchup. ANT historically has been a pretty even matchup. Those numbers are lower than what I would have expected. Of the 11 most popular decks there, D&T only put up positive numbers against 3 of them. Of those, D&T had a 100% win rate against Infect, which I believe is a unfavorable matchup for D&T in most cases. Show and Tell is supposed to be a bye, or at least that’s the common thought since D&T has so many annoying tools against it; D&T scraped by with a 54% win rate. The rest of the chart spells similar doom for D&T, with it taking a real pounding against Elves and Bant Deathblade in particular.

Monowhite felt anemic to me. I didn’t feel like I could just show up to an event with traditional D&T and expect to slog through the sea of Elves and fast combo; the resurgence of True-Name Nemesis didn’t help either. I didn’t feel like I had all the tools I wanted, and I felt like things just kept narrowly slipping through my fingers. The data supports my gut feeling. The D&T lists played by these players were perhaps not optimal, holding on to too many cards from the Miracles-era. The opposing decks probably had a little more room for sideboard hate for creatures now that they didn’t have to try and beat Miracles. Elves running around certainly stomped on a few D&T players. Some players may have overestimated D&T’s viability in the new format, and boarded extra hate for it. Maybe many players have recently picked up the deck given the reprints that have made the deck relatively budget friendly. Some combination of these things left D&T in the dust in Frankfurt. Even the three RW Taxes decks there did not fare particularly well, only outperforming traditional D&T by 3%. That may be an indication that drastically changing the deck or going into the third color is necessary.

It was not just this event either. If we look at the data from SCG Louisville, D&T did not make day 2 of the event. Now, since that was a team event, we do need to take that data with a grain of salt. That does, however, mean that any D&T players at the event (who were committed to playing that weekend and didn’t have the option of switching decks) would have played in the Legacy Classic for another shot at prizes. D&T didn’t top 16 that event either… Looking at the top 16, I can’t say that I’m surprised. There are just a bunch of unfavorable matchups floating around ranging from Food Chain to Belcher to Elves.


If you still want to force D&T, I’d recommend trying one of the lists I posted above or this one if you think cutting Swords is blasphemy.

3-Color Taxes, No Chalice

Lands (24)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Scrubland
Arid Mesa
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Windswept Heath
Plains
Plateau
Karakas

Creatures (25)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Magus of the Moon
Flickerwisp
Phyrexian Revoker
Orzhov Pontiff
Palace Jailer
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Mirran Crusader

Other Spells (11)
Aether Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Batterskull
Sideboard: (15)
Surgical Extraction
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Cunning Sparkmage
Orzhov Pontiff
Manic Vandal
Manriki-Gusari
Palace Jailer
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace

My personal Legacy notepad file (because I’m cool like that) currently has over a dozen decklists that I want to try. Of those, only one is a D&T deck. I have attributed so many of my wins recently to Magus of the Moon and Chalice of the Void rather than the core of my D&T deck. Accordingly, I want to try messing around with other similar shells. Going back to the Frankfurt data for a moment, Dragon Stompy had the second highest win percentage of the event at 57%. Julian was kind enough to provide me with a nice graph of that data. Big Red had an solid 54% win rate, the same rate as Legacy favorite Sneak and Show. I’m particularly excited about trying this build:

Red Prison, multiple MTGO finishes by Reinardbr

Planeswalker (5)
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Koth of the Hammer

Creature (14)
Hazoret the Fervent
Magus of the Moon
Quicksmith Rebel
Simian Spirit Guide
Sin Prodder

Sorcery (4)
Fiery Confluence

Artifact (15)
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Ensnaring Bridge
Trinisphere

Enchantment (4)
Blood Moon

Land (18)
Ancient Tomb
City of Traitors
10 Mountain
Sideboard (15)
Trinisphere
Ashen Rider
Leyline of the Void
Sudden Shock
Sulfur Elemental
Volcanic Fallout

This deck just gets to throw haymaker after haymaker, and every piece of hate is devastating. This might be what I’m trying to do with D&T, but a bit more aggressive in terms of speed and degree of hate. I think I quite like it conceptually. I’m working on getting the pieces now, so I haven’t done any testing with this version. I have played other similar versions in the past, and based on my experience there, I believe this deck has the potential to be more than just a flash in the pan. I’m not sure that I’m sold on the sideboard as is, but I’m not going to critique it until I have games in under my belt with their 75.


For those of you who want to stick to a monowhite D&T build due to budgetary reasons or card availability issues, things are a little rough. Not unwinnable by any means, but you may notice a real downtick in your event performance relative to the Miracles era. I would recommend lowering your curve a little bit, and playing a few more cards that hate on the new popular decks. Ethersworn Canonist, for example, is a card that has strong overlap in the Elves and Storm matchups. Michael Bonde recently played 4 Ethersworn Canonist in the sideboard of his Legacy Primer League deck. Reddit user Douges has been messing around with Aven Mindcensor and Warping Wail as options in an Ancient Tomb-driven D&T build. A few people have also been trying Mindbreak Trap as an option over slower hate as a way to insure that Thalia and friends will have time to make it to the party against Storm.


I’d like to end today’s article with a handful of things to peruse at your leisure. There have been a ton of results in the past week or so, and the format is really starting to shake up. If you have an event coming up soon, like Vegas, you’ll want to have your finger to the pulse on the format. These things will likely help you do that. Or you can just wait a few more days for Sean Brown to break it down for you…you know, whatever works for you.

Legacy Challenge
Lucerne
SCG Legacy Classic
SCG Team Constructed
Brainstorm Show’s Podcast
Sean Brown’s Analysis of Japanese Events and the Legacy Challenge

D&T, Standstill, and Legacy League Lists

Legacy is wonderful right now. There’s so much room for experimentation at the moment, and long-dead archetypes are rearing their heads once again. There’s a pretty good variety of decks showing up, although some front-runners are starting to emerge. D&T underperformed at MKM Frankfurt, putting up no real results despite being the second most popular deck at the event? Why? Well, I suspect that many of the pilots only minimally changed their builds going into the event. I don’t really think D&T is at the point where just changing one or two cards is fine. To be a good control deck, you need to prepare for the field properly. Without understanding where the field is going, that can be really difficult.

So the question is: “What do we need to do to prepare to beat the expected field?” Let’s take a look at what some people are trying:

Don Donelson's 6-0

Lands (22)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas
Horizon canopy
Mishra Factory
10 Plains

Artifacts (11)
Aether Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Sword of Fire and Ice
Batterskull
Umezawa’s Jitte

Creatures (27)
Mother of Runes
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lone Missionary
Ethersworn Canonist
Serra Avenger
Flickerwisp
Recruiter of Guard
Aven Mindcensor
Vryn Wingmare
Sideboard (15)
Rest in Peace
Moat
Circle of Protection: Red
Seal of Cleansing
Path to Exile
Council’s Judgment
Phyrexian Revoker
Sword of Feast and Famine
Pithing Needle

Don Donnelson got 13th at a Legacy Classic back in September, and he occasionally messages me to discuss the deck or exchange decklists. Don’s approach to the deck was one that isn’t taken by players nearly enough: he showed up to the event, looked around the room, and built his deck on the spot. He didn’t agonize over card choices, and try to guess what people would played. He just prepared for what was actually there. Don looked around the room and saw a fair amount of RUG Delver and Burn. Accordingly, he upped his flier count to block Delvers, added a touch of lifegain, and added Canonists to limit their ability to fire off multiple spells quickly.

Would I bring this list to a big event? No, absolutely not. Don wouldn’t either. He messaged me, laughing about the pile of a decklist that he was crushing his event with. His whopping 10 fliers plus two Moat were borderline unanswerable for some of the decks there, and invalidated some common problem cards like True-Name Nemesis. This is local metagaming done right.


Most of you probably care about the big picture though: “What do I bring to my next big event that really matters?” My personal solution to the initial changing format was to splash a color or two. Last week I was mucking around with a red splash build and a black splash build, ultimately deciding that the red was better. Perhaps, I was not greedy enough. Here’s what I’m mucking around with at the moment:

3-Color Taxes

Lands (24)
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Windswept Heath
Plains
Plateau
Karakas

Creatures (23)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Magus of the Moon
Flickerwisp
Orzhov Pontiff
Palace Jailer
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Restoration Angel

Other Spells (13)
Dismember
Aether Vial
Chalice of the Void
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Batterskull
Sideboard: (15)
Surgical Extraction
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Banisher Priest
Cunning Sparkmage
Orzhov Pontiff
Mindbreak Trap
Manriki-Gusari
Mirran Crusader
Palace Jailer

This list is based on Bahra’s recent 5-0 list, which you can find here. The list is very non-traditional, and it takes a step closer to things like White Eldrazi or Thalia Stompy. It is still most certainly D&T, though it has become very hateful to specific strategies. There are a number of haymaker cards in Chalice and Magus that threaten to end games on the spot, and any one of these plus another hate bear should make life pretty miserable for your opponents. Flickerwisp seems pretty hard to cast in this build, so I cut one and replaced it with a Restoration Angel for a little more flexibility. Aven Mindcensor or Vryn Wingmare were my other two considerations for the slot.

The removal suite in the deck is very interesting. As a Chalice deck, Swords to Plowshares isn’t a good fit. Instead, the deck leans on Dismember and creature-based removal. His original list had a few Sudden Demise, which was probably a touch ambitious given how few true red sources the deck actually had. I replaced them with Cunning Sparkmage, which plays much better with the 4 Caverns in the deck. I haven’t given it a ton of thought, put it’s possible that there are other sweet humans that I could dump in off Cavern or Vial that could fit in as well.

I only got a few games in with it last night between my games with Sneak and Show for a local Legacy league, but it does seem promising. I’ll be running it through a 4-round event tonight to see how it fares. I thought the deck might be a little soft to opposing equipment, since it doesn’t pack Revokers, so I added a Manriki-Gusari to compensate. The sideboard is still probably a bit loose, as I’m not sure the exact number of cards in/out for each match, but it does cover most bases pretty well. Note that playing a version of D&T like this will likely wildly change how you evaluate and sideboard for various matchups, and your decision trees are radically different.


While I’ve been trying to tweak my favorite control deck, other having been paving the way with all-but-forgotten archetypes…

Tyler Gardner, UR Standstill

Creatures (7)
Snapcaster Mage
Young Pyromancer
Vendilion Clique

Spells (34)
Brainstorm
Counterspell
Daze
Dismember
Engineered Explosives
Force of Will
Gitaxian Probe
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Lightning Bolt
Ponder
Fire
Spell Pierce
Standstill
Lands (20)
Polluted Delta
Scalding Tarn
Island
Mishra’s Factory
Misty Rainforest
Mountain
Volcanic Island
Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
Repeal
Flusterstorm
Forked Bolt
Grafdigger’s Cage
Izzet Staticaster
Pithing Needle
Pyroblast
Pyroclasm
Red Elemental Blast
Surgical Extraction

Tyler Gardner is one of my local players, although his name is one you’ve probably come across before. He had a great run at the last Eternal Extravaganza and ending up top 8’ing. While Aluren is his primary deck, he has been putting in a lot testing various decks for their viability in the new format. He’s had decent success with decks like this one, which is a slightly updated version of his 5-0 list from a couple of days ago. Notably, he added a Vendilion Clique to the maindeck, added a Fire//Ice, and adjusted his fetchlands. I think that this deck is actually pretty viable. The last time I checked in, he was something like 14-6 with the deck, which is not too shabby at all. The list I have here isn’t 100% current, as he is streaming with the deck almost daily, and constantly tweaking it.

[shameless plug] On that note, I do highly recommend his stream. The quality of his play is solid, he is willing to change his deck to adapt, and actually streams enough to be a Twitch partner. Yes, it is actually possible to become a Twitch partner by streaming Legacy! To celebrate that fact and hitting his 250 follower mark, he’ll be giving away a playset of (paper) Snapcaster Mage tomorrow night on stream (stream starts at ~7PM EST). He’s also planning on giving away a blue dual land once he hits his 1000 follower goal. Stream Link. Feel free to tune in to enjoy some Legacy and have a chance at winning some free stuff! [/shamelessplug]


Slightly off topic, I also added a new tab under the Additional Information bar for our local, player-run Legacy league. If you are interested in seeing what some of the Roanoke locals are trying out in the new metagame, check it out. Here’s the link to the current round. Although if you’re really looking for good ideas on what to play and prepare for, I’d take a look at Sean Brown’s article from earlier today.

The New World (Natural) Order

Miracles is dead. Your Mirri’s Guile, Scroll Rack, or Sylvan Library isn’t going to fix that. Accept it, and start preparing for the future. That future is very exciting, but somewhat uncertain. This article is a little more stream of consciousness than my normal writing, as I don’t necessarily have all the correct answers this time around, and I’m changing my mind on ideas daily. The way I approach these changes and the way others do may vary wildly as well. There are a few fundamental truths that I think are logical conclusions from the ban:

1. Elves gets way better now that Terminus is gone.
It is likely one of the best decks, but not the best deck. It doesn’t interact well with other combo in game 1, so that will likely keep it from having the title of top dog.

2. Lands gets a bit better with Miracles out of the way.
Lands players weren’t thrilled to play against Miracles. It wasn’t unwinnable, but the normal disruption Lands offered didn’t quite line up well against Miracles; Miracles was also more than happy to play the long game.

3. Deathrite Shaman is the best creature in the format.
Truth be told, I expected a card from Miracles and Deathrite to go with this banning. The one mana “planeswalker” is a must-play card if you are in the colors, and I expect it will now reach Brainstorm levels of play. We’ve already seen many decks splashing just for the activated abilities of this critter, which is telling. Just imagine how much better this card is going to feel when it doesn’t incidentally get swept off the field with a Terminus.


I don’t particularly think any of these points are up for debate, and most of the people writing about the changes tend to agree with me. Those are the simple, level zero thoughts though. What changes because of these things? Where do the Miracles pilots turn? Does Top being gone have other ramifications? What decks or creatures are well-poised to strike now that Terminus isn’t going to be a tournament staple? In no particular order, these are my thoughts:

4. Fast combo likely sees a small resurgence as the Miracles players (all playing counterspells) find new decks (not all of which will contain counterspells).

5. Blood Moon decks become better as Miracles (a basic-heavy deck) leaves the format. The exception here is Painter, which is really going to miss Top.

6. Stoneblade decks make at least some degree of resurgence, as Miracles largely invalidated it.

7. Delver decks see a slight uptick in popularity due to ample early interaction.

8. Cards like True-Name Nemesis or Nimble Mongoose (and to a lesser extent, Leovold) are well-positioned with Terminus gone. Some amount of Toxic Deluge or other sweepers appears to deal with them.

9. The amount of Swords to Plowshares in the format drops a bit. Threats/decks that were soft to it are worth another look.

The Miracles players need to go somewhere. Some portion of them will shift over to other control decks, but others will jump to entirely different types of decks. In the initial period of instability, being on a linear combo deck seems great. Kill your opponent while their dead cards and poor deckbuilding choices cause them to stumble. The control decks of the format are going to have issues in the first couple of weeks. The whole idea behind an effective control deck is that you know what your opponents are most likely to be playing, and you come prepared with cards to invalidate their decisions. When you don’t know what to prepare for, it’s really hard to optimize your deck.

10. Sideboards of the format shift dramatically.

This is, in my opinion, the most important implication of the bannings, and it’s not something that is immediately obvious. We’ve had Miracles around for so long, that maybe you haven’t realized how warped your deck has become to fight it. D&T, for example, has historically had cards like Sword of War and Peace and Gideon, Ally of Zendikar to fight against it. Those cards are considerably worse, and maybe unplayable at the moment. Many decks played cards like Winter Orb, Krosan Grip, or Abrupt Decay to fight against Miracles. The need to have anti-Miracles cards is gone, so that means that most Legacy decks will have room for other hate. For many decks, 3-5 cards in the sideboard might be changing. That is huge by Legacy standards.

Decks that previously couldn’t afford a certain type of hate due to the omnipresence of Miracles now have newfound freedom. That may result in more specific hate than what we’ve seen from Legacy in the past few years. I would expect more specialized hate like Engineered Plague, Surgical Extraction, Leyline of the Void, Warmth, and Dread of Night to start appearing. Obviously, what sort of specialized hate will appear depends on how the metagame shifts, but I think this is going to be a very real occurrence moving forward.



The State of D&T

The good news is that we’re going to have a very diverse and exciting metagame for the next few weeks (or even months). The bad news is that traditional D&T is going to be very poorly positioned for a little while. It will still likely be a tier one deck, but we’re not going to have nice, positive matchups against the entire top of the metagame any more. We’re faced with problems on four primary fronts: Elves is going to be popular, fast combo will be popular, we can’t adjust our deck to beat a known metagame, and people will have more room in sideboards for hate for us. If my other predictions are right, we may start seeing more True-Name Nemesis wielding Umezawa’s Jitte, which is also problematic. The conclusion should be obvious by now:

Don’t play traditional D&T for the next few weeks

The key to that sentence is actually the word traditional. I actually think that D&T can be a great choice moving forward, but if there has ever been a time to try a splash or try something kooky, it’s right now. If I were going to an event this weekend, I’d try a red splash. Blood Moon is going to be good, so Magus of the Moon should do a suitable impression. I really like the idea of having some pingers like Cunning Sparkmage, Fireslinger, or Goblin Sharpshooter to mow down Elves and other small threats.

Red Splash Draft

Creatures (26)
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Magus of the Moon
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Recruiter of the Guard
Ethersworn Canonist
Stoneforge Mystic
Sanctum Prelate
Cunning Sparkmage
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
Plains
Arid Mesa
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Plateau
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas

Spells (11)
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Seal of Cleansing
Ethersworn Canonist
Cunning Sparkmage
Containment Priest
Surgical Extraction
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Council’s Judgment
Mirran Crusader

Three Magus might be a touch ambitious, but I have a feeling that card will just be ending games all over the place. If I dropped Caverns from this list, I’d replace at a Cunning Sparkmage with a Goblin Sharpshooter. Sudden Demise is tempting, but I like my splash cards to be creatures so that Vial gives me a couple more ways to get them in play.

Alternative, I’ve thought that a black splash might be great as well:

Post 4/24/17 W/B D&T

Lands (23)
Plains
Arid Mesa
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Scrubland
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Orzhov Pontiff
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Ethersworn Canonist
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extraction
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Orzhov Pontiff

Kambal, Consul of Allocation should be a great way to annoy various combo decks of the format, and Orzhov Pontiff seems like a major annoyance to both Elves and True-Name based decks. It’s tempting to run discard, but even if you dump the Caverns for more true black sources, you still only end up with a 50-something percent chance to have black mana in your opener. That’s a bit risky for a card you want to play on turn 1.

Of note, there are a couple of deckbuilding decisions going into both of these lists. SoWaP gets the axe. It’s my favorite card in D&T, but since I was playing it primarily for Miracles, it is probably not a good choice right now. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar either gets trimmed or cut completely for the same reason. Revoker is still a great card, but I think it’s likely fine to go down to two in order to diversify the hate a bit.

I’m not actually sure that Cavern of Souls is good anymore; trading creatures one for one with counterspells is fine, it was just the fear of getting locked out by a Counterbalance that pushed players to try two or three copies of the card. If I were to play mono-white, I’d try other lands in this slot for a little while. Horizon Canopy, Mishra’s Factory,
and Ghost Quarter all seem like reasonable inclusions. Cavern sort of functions as a dual land with upside in the splash builds, so it might still be fine there.

Many of the staple deckbuilding decisions of the past simply aren’t going to hold true moving forward. I’d even be willing to try D&T without Port at this point. I’d guess that over half of my Port activations were against Miracles. Denying mana to basic lands is amazing, but if the most prominent basic land deck leaves the format, and multi-color decks shine, trimming or cutting Port isn’t going to be the most blasphemous thing I’ve ever heard. Ghost Quarter would be the potential substitution. I think I’d lean towards keeping Port at the moment, as it’s going to be good against the various Blood Moon / Chalice of the Void decks looking to accelerate out stuff via Ancient Tomb, but I’m not above trying it out. The issue with Ghost Quarter is that it isn’t always consistently good like Port is; it has higher upside in many cases though, so that’s not to be ignored. Again, I don’t think cutting Port is a good idea, but it’s on my list of things to keep an eye on depending on where the metagame goes.


More than anything else, I suggest you think for yourself and do some research. There are so many people writing and speaking about Legacy right now. Joe Losset, Sean Brown, and Bob Huang all have thoughts that are 100% worth your time. There’s more discussion about Legacy on Reddit and The Source than I have seen in ages. The banning went into effect immediately on MTGO, so you can mine data off the 5-0 results in a couple of days for an early look at the metagame. I am very excited about the changes to Legacy. I love research and tinkering, and this is the perfect time for me to actually try out a bunch of the ideas I’ve had on the back burner for ages. I do have a request though: If you all could load up on copies of Perish, that would be great…

This Week in D&T

While I was out playing around with Food Chain, a bunch of other people did notable things with D&T. I wanted to highlight some results from the past few days and discuss some of the lists in detail; while I’m constantly gathering data from The Source and MtG:Salvation, I realize that most people probably aren’t keeping tabs on things as closely as I am. The Legacy metagame is in flux at the moment, with 4 Color Control being the “new” contender. It’s just a pile of good, value-oriented cards. It doesn’t have a fast clock, but it outgrinds and outdraws most of the format. So, how do we approach this menace? I’m going to look at the decklists of a handful of MtG:Salvation and The Source users from this weekend to show off the various approaches you can take to D&T in the current metagame.

Mad Mat, 1st at a 26 person event

Lands (23)
Scrubland
Flooded Strand
Plains
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas
Cavern of Souls

Creatures (27)
Mother of Runes
Judge’s Familiar
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Recruiter of the Guard
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Sanctum Prelate
Orzhov Pontiff
Mirran Crusader

Other (11)
Aether Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Rest in Peace
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Pithing Needle
Path to Exile
Blessed Alliance
Palace Jailer
Sanctum Prelate
Leonin Relic-Warder
Sword of War and Peace

Here’s his brief write up.

I don’t like a few of the choices here. Judge’s Familiar has always seemed a little anemic to me. Yes, sometimes you will get a disgustingly sick surprise off an Aether Vial and completely blow out your opponent. More often, it’s a tax spell that can just be played around that doesn’t have a super-relevant body. It’s likely to snag a Ponder quality card at some point, but you rarely get something juicy like a Natural Order or Infernal Tutor. I don’t like it in the face of the Baleful Strix decks that are floating around. It does, however, synergize well with Thalia, Heretic Cathar to further put the pressure on the opponent’s mana.

I, personally, would have run two Kambal, Consul of Allocation over the two THC. If you’re already going to splash black, going a card or two deeper probably doesn’t hurt too much. Wasteland is at a relative low at the moment, so the splash is likely somewhat safe. Kambal seems brutal against 4 Color Control, as well as serving an annoying, protect-able threat for the Miracles matchup.

I do *really* like Orzhov Pontiff. It’s a mirror-breaker, and it has random upside in a ton of matchups. It can clear out Young Pyromancer tokens, sweep away opposing idiots like Baleful Strix, remove a True-Name Nemesis, give you a glimmer of hope against Elves…


Iatee, 11th Legacy Open

Creatures (26)
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Magus of the Moon
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Palace Jailer
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Stoneforge Mystic
Vryn Wingmare
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
Plains
Arid Mesa
Cavern of Souls
Flooded Strand
Plateau
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas

Spells (11)
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Relic of Progenitus
Sword of War and Peace
Ethersworn Canonist
Cunning Sparkmage
Faerie Macabre
Leonin Relic-Warder
Magus of the Moon
Mirran Crusader
Sanctum Prelate
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Pia and Kiran Nalaar
Council’s Judgment

Here’s his tournament report.

Iatee has been a very active member on The Source for years, and I frequently check up on how he’s doing at events. In the pre-Recruiter of the Guard era, he argued strongly for the red splash, primarily citing the power of Magus of the Moon as a blowout card and the excellent toolbox the red splash gives you. In a feature match against Miracles in this event, he Vialed it in, temporarily cutting his opponent off white mana and putting a huge strain on his opponent’s mana. That card isn’t even supposed to be good against Miracles! Just imagine what that card would do against the 4 Color Control deck or Lands! I’m not usually a fan of splashing, but I think it was a great weekend to splash.

His sideboard deviates from the traditional norm a bit, but I think that’s a good thing. I’ve posted previously about how I think the sideboard can use some work, and this shores up many of my concerns. With this configuration, it’s very easy to pull out the weaker spells in most matchups and replace them with more relevant cards. I’m not very hot on Faerie Macabre, as I prefer the more flexible Surgical Extraction, but I like all of the other tutor targets quite a bit. Pia and Kiran Nalaar serves as both a recursive threat and removal, which is very good in the face of the other grindy decks of the format. If the metagame stays where it is currently after the release of the next set, I think this is a very solid list to bring to a big event.


Neckbird, 1st, Legacy Classic

Creatures (26)
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas

Spells (11)
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Sword of War and Peace
Ethersworn Canonist
Faerie Macabre
Leonin Relic-Warder
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Surgical Extraction
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Council’s Judgment

Here’s his report. There isn’t any spice here. This is just generic, mono-white taxes. It’s quite similar to what I’ve been running, though he didn’t take the plunge and move SoWaP to the main. There is no need to warp your deck to beat the new meta; the tried and true mono-white version is still great.


Stephen Dupal, 32nd, Legacy Open

Creatures (26)
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader
Mother of Runes
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Horizon Canopy
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas

Spells (11)
Aether Vial
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Swords to Plowshares
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Ethersworn Canonist
Containment Priest
Faerie Macabre
Palace Jailer
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Council’s Judgment

Again, there isn’t anything fancy here. Palace Jailer is a reasonable inclusion in the deck, though one I’m not a huge fan of personally. There are some games where it is the most insane card in your deck, and others where it single-handedly loses you the game when your Miracles opponent manages to steal the crown. I’m also not a fan of Horizon Canopy, but I don’t fault people for playing it. I don’t think there is any matchup where we *need* this card, so I don’t run it. I like it a little bit better in Iatee’s list, since he has another four drop in Pia and Kiran Nalaar, so ticking Vial up to four doesn’t just mean your Vial is now 100% worthless.


AntiquatedNotion, Top 64, Legacy Open

Lands (23)
11 Plains
Cavern of Couls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Critters (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Sanctum Prelate
Recruiter of the Guard
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Gideon Ally of Zendikar
Containment Priest
Council’s Judgment
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Pithing Needle
Batterskull
Surgical Extraction

Here’s his tournament report.

I’ve been meeting up with Louis for years at events, and I frequently bounce ideas off him before I go and make some big changes to the deck or try something crazy. His list is almost identical to mine, though he opted to run another Avenger over the second Recruiter. In making that change, it also makes sense to trim one Cavern of Souls for another more stable white source. He is running a second Containment Priest over a second Surgical, a change that I think I can get behind. R/B Reanimator is certainly still a deck, but it’s not quite at GP Louisville levels of popularity anymore.


While not a touranment report, Reddit user Douges took the time to discuss Dryad Militant as a legitimate maindeck option. You can read about it here. While I don’t think I can get behind Dryad Militant in the deck, I do absolutely understand where he’s coming from in wanting some maindeck graveyard hate. I’ve been toying around with the idea of running some number of Relic of Progenitus in the main for the past week. It’s something that I tested before, and it was relatively respectable. After Brainstorm, Deathrite Shaman is likely one of the better and most popular cards in the format. I don’t mind hating on it a bit more than we are now. Running a couple of Relics in the main could free up some sideboard slots too, and I’m all about tinkering with the sideboard at the moment…


3rd at an EW Trial

While many of my friends made the trek to Worcester this weekend, I couldn’t quite justify the 10 hour drive and two days off of work (or a plane ticket). Instead, I opted to just play a small local event, an Eternal Weekend trial, for a chance at a bye in a tournament that would actually matter. Here’s what I submitted:

Food Chain

Creatures (18)
Baleful Strix
Deathrite Shaman
Walking Ballista
Misthollow Griffin
Leovold, Emissary of Trest
Eternal Scourge

Spells (22)
Brainstorm
Force of Will
Abrupt Decay
Ponder
Manipulate Fate
Food Chain
Lands (20)
Misty Rainforest
Verdant Catacombs
Polluted Delta
Tropical Island
Underground Sea
Island
Forest
Swamp
Bayou

Sideboard (15)
Surgical Extraction
Thoughtseize
Mindbreak Trap
Engineered Plague
Diabolic Edict
Pithing Needle
Vendilion Clique
Flusterstorm
Relic of Progenitus

*record scratch* Yup, I didn’t play D&T this weekend. I’ve spent the past two weeks playing Miracles and Food Chain to help friends test for Worcester, and in my testing, I realized that Food Chain is absurdly good. It’s been getting a little bit of press recently, with Marius Hausmann and Rudy Brizska putting out some fantastic articles on it. After a last minute testing session Friday night, I opted to pull the trigger and play it for a local event.

I legitimately believe Food Chain is one of the better decks in the format; the deck has always been fine, but the addition of Walking Ballista pushed the card to being truly competitive. The current Legacy metagame is full of a bunch of midrange 3-4 color decks that attempt to grind out their opponents with cards like Snapcaster Mage and Kolaghan’s Command. Food Chain has Manipulate Fate, the most absurd draw spell in the format. You get to exile some combination of Misthollow Griffin and Eternal Scourage, then draw a card. Between that and infinitely recurring said creatures via Food Chain, Food Chain ends up being very well-positioned against many of the top decks. Despite how much card advantage they have, it’s just extremely difficult to overcome the recurring stream of idiots as the game goes to extreme late game. If they somehow get all of your recursive idiots in the yard, Deathrite Shaman, Relic of Progenitus, and Surgical Extraction threaten to undo all that work very quickly.

There are three competing builds of Food Chain at the moment: a 4 Walking Ballista build; a Fierce Empath toolbox build with Gurmag Angler and Emrakul, the Aeons Torn; and a Trinket Mage toolbox build with cards like Relic of Progenitus and Engineered Explosives. I opted for running as many copies of Ballista as I could since that card is absurd even when just cast for X=2 or 3. Ballista often does a ton of work just picking off things like Mother of Runes, Young Pyromancer, and Deathrite Shaman. I wanted to be able to blow a Ballista or two early without the fear of losing my combo finish.


The tournament had a tiny turnout, and we only ended up playing 4 rounds and cutting to top 8. Nevertheless, here’s the report:

2-0 vs BUG Delver
2-1 vs Bomberman (Auriok Salvagers combo)
2-0 vs Aluren
ID vs Lands
2-0 vs 4 Color Delver
1-2 vs Bomberman


Vs BUG Delver

Food Chain preys on Delver decks. While those decks are full of cards that are strong in the early game like Daze and Stifle, they just aren’t equipped for the long game. Food Chain has so many cards like Abrupt Decay and Baleful Strix that can buy time until the combo or superior card quality steals the game. A resolved Manipulate Fate is pretty much unbeatable for a Delver deck, and you need to be patient and not just run it into a Daze if you want to win.

In my first round against BUG Delver, my opponent hit me down to 11 both times before I stabilized the board.I just pecked my opponent to death with Eternal Scourage and Misthollow Griffin. Even without Food Chain, a couple of 3/3 bodies can be a real pain for Delver decks, especially since removal like Abrupt Decay and Fatal Push don’t line up well against the threat base.


Vs Bomberman
Speaking of how great Walking Ballista is…

Bomberman

Lands (18)
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls
City of Traitors
Plains
Tundra

Spells (42)
Auriok Salvagers
Chalice of the Void
Gitaxian Probe
Lion’s Eye Diamond
Lodestone Bauble
Lotus Petal
Monastery Mentor
Mox Opal
Trinket Mage
Urza’s Bauble
Walking Ballista
Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Disenchant
Echoing Truth
Engineered Explosives
Leyline of the Void
Pithing Needle
Ratchet Bomb
Serenity
Venser, Shaper Savant

I’ll start by saying that this deck probably isn’t good, but it certainly does have the surprise factor going for it. The goal of this deck is to get an Auriok Salvagers in play and recur Black Lotus…err Lion’s Eye Diamond to make infinite mana. Once that happens, you can win by blasting your opponent with a Walking Ballista or forcing them to draw their deck with Lodestone Bauble. If you don’t assemble that, dropping an early Monastery Mentor does a surprising amount of work when your deck is full of cantrips stapled to artifacts.

The first two games were very boring and had literal zero interaction. I combo off on turn three in game one, and he combos off on turn 3 or 4 in game 2. Game three was more interesting, but he basically folded to a pair of hate cards: Pithing Needle for Salvagers and Surgical Extraction to pull out the Lion’s Eye Diamond.


Vs Aluren

Aluren and Food Chain are cut from the same cloth. Both of these decks are value-oriented midrange decks with a combo finish. Since Aluren’s combo finish costs more mana, it is not favored in the matchup, at least in game one. The game frequently devolves into a midrange battle, with Leovold, Emissary of Trest serving as a relative trump card. My slightly larger creatures ended up winning a long attrition battle in both games, though my opponent’s draws were not the best. The most important play of the match was flashing in a Vendilion Clique to ambush a Leovold mid-combat, unlocking the cantrips in my hand.

I made a misplay at the tail end of game one. My opponent was pretty dead to my board on the following turn, and I opted to use a Deathrite Shaman to gain some life and eliminate the possibility of losing the game to some sort of double removal spell shenanigans. In reality, I should have just drained my opponent to give him fewer opportunities to bounce things with Cavern Harpy if he top decked one.


Vs Lands
I had intended to play out every round today for the sake of getting experience with the deck. Then I noticed that if I drew, I was going to be 1st seed with 100% certainty. I’m not one to turn down that situation. My opponent offered the draw and I accepted. I wouldn’t have minded playing it out though, as the matchup seems favorable. His mana denial plan doesn’t line up well against my four basics, and he had no real way to interact with the combo. I, on the other hand, had Force of Will for the early plays, Deathrite Shaman for Life from the Loam, and an army of friendly Griffons willing to jump in front of a Marit Lage.


Top 8: Vs Four Color Delver
Everything that I previously said about Delver applied here as well. In my top 8 match vs 4 Color Delver, I just started casting Walking Ballista for 1 or 2. My opponent was forced to counter them or lose his Young Pyromancer and/or Delver of Secrets. This cleared the way for the combo a few turns down the road, and I combo’d off on about turn 7 or 8 both games. If my opponent didn’t counter these, I would have just spent my mana ticking them up and sniping every threat he played; alternatively, I would eat what he currently had on board, and he would have to use a removal spell on them at some point. It just felt like an insurmountable situation for my opponent. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I played four Ballista instead of a toolbox build.


Top 4: Vs Bomberman
I was pretty happy to be playing against this deck again; the matchup felt very positive in the swiss rounds earlier. Once again, in game one, I combo’d off without any resistance from my opponent.

In game two, my opponent sticks a Chalice of the Void on one on the first turn. This is not something that I particularly cared about. I had boarded out Ponder, anticipating this issue, and my deck had four Abrupt Decay to answer it if need be. The only one drops in my deck were now Brainstorm, Deathrite Shaman, and hate cards like Pithing Needle, Thoughtseize, and Surgical Extraction. Lo and behold, a few turns down the line, my board consists of a Food Chain, a lone Misthollow Griffin, and six lands. My hand consists of six one drops and a land… My opponent is terrified to go for the combo; if I have something like Decay plus Surgical, he’ll lose on the spot.

We play draw go for a good number of turns until he finally uses a Monastery Mentor as a bait spell. When I do nothing about it, the jig is up that my hand is actually pretty weak. He makes a few tokens and passes, and I expect that I’m probably dead the following turn. Up until the final turn of the game, I most certainly would have won with a single Decay, Ballista, or Manipulate Fate. Game two was a loss solely due to variance, but that’s okay. That’s what makes Chalice a great card; it can just win you games you otherwise have no business winning.

In game three, I keep a hand with a Food Chain, Deathrite Shaman, Misthollow Griffin, an Engineered Plague, and three lands. This hand shuts off the Monastery Mentor plan, and has the potential for a quick combo finish. Sure enough, my opponent goes for the Mentor plan, and Engineered Plague is devastatingly good. To lock this game up, I can draw a Ballista for an instant kill, a piece of graveyard hate to eliminate the possibility of my opponent going off, or a Manipulate Fate to generate blockers and put my opponent on a 1-2 turn clock. Unfortunately, I just bottom out and die to the combo.

There were some micro-decisions that I could have done differently, but I just didn’t have draws that allowed me to win in games two and three. Moving forward, I wouldn’t hate one more card advantage spell in the 75; Manipulate Fate is stupid good, but poor when drawn in multiples; a one-of Sylvan Library or Painful Truths might be very good.


My two roommates and I took 1st-3rd place at this event, which was kind of neat. It would have been more impressive if the event had more players, but c’est la vie. Anyway, I felt favored in every match I sat down to play, which is somewhat of a rarity. I don’t think Food Chain has many truly unfavorable matches, and most of those are things like Belcher, ANT, TES, and Sneak and Show which can just outpace Food Chain’s combo. I’m not surprised that there was a recently buyout/spike of Food Chain, and I really encourage you to put in some time playing with or against this deck in preparation for your next event.

EE6 Report

The prize payout for Eternal Extravaganza 6 was absolutely stacked. We had been testing for this event for quite some time; the Legacy and Vintage leagues in Roanoke were established largely to get in more games in preparation for this tournament series. Here’s what I submitted for the Legacy portion of the event.

EE 6 D&T

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extraction
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Batterskull

This is the same 75 I ran for my last two big events, and it has treated me very well. SoWaP has over-performed in the main, and the deck feels very smooth and consistent. Louis Fata and Mike Derczo both submitted the same 75 I did, and I felt like we had the best deck in the room walking into the event. Here’s the short version of how I did, followed by notable moments:

2-1 vs Painter
2-1 vs Miracles
1-2 vs ANT
1-2 vs Aggro Loam
2-1 vs ANT
2-1 vs Miracles
2-1 vs D&T
0-2 vs Burn

Vs Painter
Painter’s Servant is a game-warping card. While most people respect the little 1/3 critter due to the instant win potential with Grindstone, turning Red Elemental Blast or Pyroblast into a Counterspell or Vindicate is pretty gross too. The issue is that without Painter, all of those cards are very underwhelming against non-blue decks. I got a pretty savage blowout in game 2 that involved removing a Painter mid-combat in response to a Pyroblast on my Revoker. Without the Painter in play, the Pyroblast does nothing upon resolution.

While it’s perhaps not immediately obvious, Painter is a pretty mana hungry deck. In game three, I locked my opponent under a Thalia while he only had a City of Traitors and a Mountain for lands. He had a Sensei’s Divining Top, and every turn he was faced with a terrible choice: dig with Top again or cast one spell. He lost so much tempo that he was never able to recover. He flashed me a Kozilek’s Return at the end of the game, so I dodged a bullet there.

Vs Miracles

I was paired against Oliver Tomajko this round, who had a pretty deep run with Miracles in Louisville. I had played him previously when he was on BUG, but I suspected that he’d stay on Miracles after his great 10th place finish. The match was very interesting, but ultimately, he couldn’t deal with SoWaP and, to a lesser extent, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. I closed game one out in two turns with SoWaP. He decimated me in game two with a sequence of his own Gideon, Jace, Terminus, and Entreat the Angels. I really like Gideon in Miracles personally; I think Oliver could have been a little more aggressive with his Gideon, though I understand not wanting to expose it to Swords to Plowshares. In game 3, I just patiently deployed threats and equipped turn after turn. I forced him to deal with each one or die each turn. At some point I stuck a Gideon, and that proved to be insurmountable.

Vs ANT
In game one, my opponent plays Gitaxian Probe and Underground Sea. He sees my hand, which notably contains a Karakas and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben. My opponent then plays a cantrip and concedes. He had taken a mulligan, and something in my hand was going to prove unbeatable. I board for ANT. There’s a possibility that my opponent is on something like Tin Fins or Reanimator, but my gut says that it’s most likely that he wants me to over-board or keep in bad cards. If I’m wrong, boarding for ANT still means I’ve got mostly good cards in for the Reanimator matchup. If I board for Reanimator, I’ll have stuff like Council’s Judgment and Containment Priest that would be terrible in the ANT matchup.

Game 3 was interesting. I used a Pithing Needle and hit Polluted Delta. My opponent had a double Delta opener, so this bought me a pretty considerable amount of time. Unfortunately, I had only two lands myself and was unable to put up much pressure. My opponent has been cantripping and missing land drops. I’ve deployed a Rest in Peace and an Ethersworn Canonist

Eventually, I am faced with a pretty difficult decision. My opponent has a tapped Tropical Island that they used to Ponder, and a Flooded Strand they found off the Ponder. I can either play a second Canonist or Wasteland and drop a Vial. My opponent doesn’t have any lands, I’m relatively sure of that based on the previous few turns. If I play the Wasteland, I keep my opponent from casting an Abrupt Decay on my Canonist or Needle unless they have a Lotus Petal; they can’t start going off unless they have an additional Lotus Petal to boot. If I play the second Canonist, I stop my opponent from going off next turn unless they have something like a Massacre or Echoing Truth, but I open the window for my opponent to Decay the Needle and unlock two mana.

Given that my opponent’s mana was already choked due to the Needle (and indirectly due to the RiP neutering Cabal Ritual), I opt to stick to the mana denial plan. As odd as it sounds, getting the Vial in play at the cost of one of my lands is a trade I’m willing to make; I can’t really progress my board aggressively with just two lands, and even if I drew another, I might be hesitant to play a Plains to try and play around Massacre. My opponent had two Lotus Petals and managed to combo off. C’est la vie. I’m not 100% sure if the line I took was right or wrong here. I talked it over with a few players, both Storm and D&T, and I got very different answers and reasoning from various people.

Vs Aggro Loam
My knowledge of the format bit me in the butt this round. I quickly put my opponent on Aggro Loam despite his best efforts to masquerade as a Lands deck for a couple of turns. I spent the entire match playing around the Dark Depths and Thespian’s Stage combo. I took lines that would keep me from dying to double (on in one case, triple) Knight of the Reliquary activations. Yet, my opponent wasn’t going for the kill. All match, I just assumed that my opponent recognized that I was playing around their combo, and they refused to take the bait and potentially lose because of it. Turns out, they weren’t going for it because the combo wasn’t in their deck… Awkward. I guess I could have recognized that at some point, but I just couldn’t comprehend playing the deck without the possibility of stealing free wins. Since I played scared of the combo, I didn’t take risks. I played it safe and drowned in a sea of card advantage from Dark Confidant.

I also made my only egregious misplay of the event during this match. I had a Batterskull equipped with Umezawa’s Jitte. My play was to Port my opponent’s Maze of Ith and crash in. My Jitte counters would have allowed me to kill two Dark Confidant. I set my Port and a Plains aside for just that purpose, take an action, and attack. I am horrified. I realize that I forgot to Port. Stone-faced, I just stare down my opponent. He goes to double block with the two Confidants and then goes… “Wait a sec, we’re in combat?!” He mazes my Germ, and we have a good laugh about how much of an idiot I was. I still won that game, but it took like another 10 turns than it needed to.

Vs ANT

The pairings for this round were bittersweet. I was paired against my good friend, Anneliese Faustino. When I was at the University of Maryland as a grad student, Anneliese was an undergrad and just learning to play Magic. We played quite a bit there, but we largely played with common and uncommon loaner decks that I made for the Magic club or cubed. Now she was all grown up and playing Storm. *sniff* Senpai was so proud…

Anyway, she put up one heck of a fight. In game one, I dropped a turn two Thalia followed by a turn three Revoker on Lion’s Eye Diamond. She cursed the gods, but still insisted that this was better than Chalice of the Void. She fired off a couple of Cabal Ritual and tried to power through the hate, but then realized mid-Ad Nauseum that there wasn’t really an out for her.

She got her revenge game two. She mulliganed and led with a Dread of Night. Three of the cards in my hand are now dead. I make a joke about her playing a second Dread of Night as a follow up, and she giggled and obliged. I now have four creatures in the deck that can deal damage: 3 Revokers and 1 Serra Avenger. I drop The Little Revoker That Could on LED, but it doesn’t quite go the distance. She Ad Nauseums and stops at 1 to kill me.

I think back to the morning, and remember that I saw her sideboard while we were chatting. She has a whopping three Dread of Night in there. I decided to bring in Council’s Judgment to combat this, something that I have never done against Storm decks previously. It was not particularly relevant, as a Thalia shut her out of the game, but it felt very odd to me to have to hedge that hard against hate.

Vs Miracles
Did I mention SoWaP is good against Miracles yet? Oh, I did?! Well, not much else to say here then…

Vs D&T
This was the event where I just played against everyone I knew. I was paired against Louis Fata (Antiquated Notion on MtG:S). I’ve been swapping decklists and strategy with Louis for years, and I convinced him to run my 75 the morning of the event; he only had to swap a Serra Avenger for the third Crusader, and it didn’t take much convincing for him to want to try SoWaP in the main. He had similar lackluster thoughts on Batterskull. Relevantly, we had dueling SoWaP in both games 1 and 3 of this match, and he won game 2 after sticking SoWaP (and two other pieces of equipment for that matter). I only won game one because I was on the play, and being on the play for game three was similarly important. I can’t imagine a decklist without SoWaP at this point; it’s so important to have two trump pieces of equipment for the mirror that way you still have a game breaker once the first is Revoked or Needled.

Vs Burn
I don’t want to play against Burn in the last round of an event. That means that my Burn opponent is competent. I’ll play against bad burn players all day, but the good ones are a struggle. I kept hands that lined up poorly against his and lost without much resistance.


That meant my record for the day was a mediocre 5-3. That was good enough to make my money back, but I wasn’t particularly happy with the result given the stacked prize pool. I think I played well and I have no regrets in my deckbuilding choices. The ANT matchup I lost was within reach, but I was destroyed by Aggro Loam and Burn with little say in the matter. Derczo top 8’d with my 75, so that’s a great consolation prize. This was actually the first time I met Derczo in person, and I wish I had the chance to chat with him a little more. After the event, he felt that the decklist was pretty much perfect. He missed the 2nd Serra Avenger, but couldn’t quite justify cutting anything for it; similarly, he liked the idea of trying out an Armageddon as another haymaker against Miracles.

The rest of the weekend went poorly for me. I was a passenger in a car accident Saturday night. I was relatively uninjured (unlike the cars), but my shoulders, neck, and back are still pretty sore. I spent Sunday in bed watching Planet Earth 2 while eating pizza and cookies. While it wasn’t quite my plan for the weekend, it wasn’t bad, all things considered. Alrighty, this article has gotten too long, so let’s end it with some bullet points so I can start prepping for an anime convention this weekend.


Props
Tyler Gardner, Jonathan Suarez, Mike Derczo, and Anuraag Das for their top 8 finishes.
Tales of Adventure for putting on the sort of events that will keep Legacy alive.
Free Chipotle catering for feeding 10 of us for a couple of meals.
SoWaP for being bros and getting people dead.
[I forgot her name] for playing a Monarch deck called “Pretty Pretty Princess” while having a tiara to do it right.

Slops
Tales of Adventure for a borderline unusable website and poor advertising.
Legacy players for not showing up to this event. Seriously, 180 something people is a weak showing, guys and gals.
Unlicensed drivers for obvious reasons.
Batterskull for being a bad card. I only put it in play once all event.

[Vintage] 18 Rounds with White Eldrazi

While this site is dedicated to Legacy D&T, let’s be real, I’m going to be jamming Thalia in Vintage too. With Eternal Extravaganza 6 on the horizon, I figured this was a decent time for some Vintage content. I recently played 18 rounds in a 20 person Vintage League in Roanoke. We played three rounds of 6 matches, and you were allowed to switch decks between rounds. Here was my initial decklist:

Round 1

Artifacts (13)
Black Lotus
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Mox Pearl
Mox Jet
Mox Emerald
Mana Crypt
Thorn of Amethyst

Creatures (26)
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Containment Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Reality Smasher
Eldrazi Displacer
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (21)
Strip Mine
Karakas
Eldrazi Temple
Wasteland
Plains
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls

Sideboard (15)
Ghost Quarter
Fragmentize
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Kataki, War’s Wage
Containment Priest
Grafdigger’s Cage
Null Rod
Crucible of Worlds


The maindeck is relatively stock. There are about two flex slots in the maindeck, and I decided I wanted to try Spirit of the Labyrinth. Monastery Mentor and Young Pyromancer are pretty powerful alongside the format’s powerful draw cards like Ancestral Recall and Gush, so crippling those enablers seemed like a great idea to me. The sideboard was relatively generic, with the exception of the Crucible of Worlds. While that might have been a bit ambitious, it seemed like it had great potential for abuse.

The first round went very well for me. I ended with a record of 5-1.

1-2 vs Junk Hatebears
2-0 vs Shops
2-0 vs Shops
2-1 vs Eldrazi White
2-0 vs Bomberman Oath
2-1 vs Mentor Gush

Given my pairings for the round, I wasn’t overly pleased with the Spirits in the maindeck, but I did conceptually like them quite a bit. I felt pretty good about the rest of my card choices. My strong artifact hate package made quick work of the Shops decks, but Walking Ballista was an absolutely terrifying card; I used Phyrexian Revoker and Pithing Needle on it every time if I didn’t have a target on board. The Oath matchup felt borderline unwinnable for my opponent; every card in the deck has such a high impact on the board that the Oath player really needs to have some great sideboard cards to even have a chance. I was surprised at the effectiveness of Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy in the Mentor matchup; in the game I lost, my opponent used a Time Walk, dropped JVP, flashed back the Time Walk, and created a small army with Mentor.


I intended to play Shops for round two of the league, but the decklists were due on a Monday after I just got back from GP:Louisville. I didn’t feel like I had the time to research the various lists and tweak one to my liking, so I decided to run back Eldrazi White again, opting to swap the Spirit of the Labyrinth and Kataki, War’s Wage. I’m pretty sure this is the sideboard I submitted, but my sideboard didn’t make it into our decklist spreadsheet for some reason.

Round 2

Artifacts (13)
Black Lotus
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Mox Pearl
Mox Jet
Mox Emerald
Mana Crypt
Thorn of Amethyst

Creatures (26)
Kataki, War’s Wage
Containment Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Reality Smasher
Eldrazi Displacer
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (21)
Strip Mine
Karakas
Eldrazi Temple
Wasteland
Plains
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls

Sideboard (15)
Null Rod
Ghost Quarter
Fragmentize
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Kataki, War’s Wage
Pithing Needle
Containment Priest
Grafdigger’s Cage
Rest in Peace


Despite the similarity in decklists, this round went very poorly for me:

1-2 vs Mentor Gush
2-1 vs Grixis Thieves
1-2 vs Emrakul, the Promised End Control (UW Standstill without Standstill)
1-2 vs Eldrazi White
2-0 vs UW Landstill
1-2 vs Shops

Though the round broke poorly for me, I wasn’t unhappy with playing the deck again. My Mentor and Shops opponents hit strings of good draws in game three which got them out of tight spots. My Eldrazi White opponent made a few errors, but since he was able to win the mana war in two of the games, I wasn’t able to capitalize on them. The Emrakul Control deck actually couldn’t do anything against me. Due to an odd board state involving a Moat and Chalice of the Void, he had to kill me by taking my turn, tapping my two Ancient Tomb, and bouncing his Emrakul with my Karakas to repeat the process. Vintage is neat.

I did notice a few poor choices in my own deckbuilding and sideboarding in this round; I am not blaming my losses this round on variance. I lost a game to a Moat while I had a Fragmentize in hand; I was unable to resolve it due to my own Chalice of the Void on one. I was really hot on Fragmentize in round one, but after realizing this potential issue, I decided my future lists would need at least one Disenchant or other similar card. I somewhat frequently encountered issues with my own Kataki, War’s Wage taxing my resources as much as, if not more than, my opponent’s resources. In a deck full of artifact mana and Thorn of Amethyst style cards, it can be a liability. This is even more true in the post-board games where Pithing Needle, Null Rod, and Crucible of Worlds would be taxed by it as well. I also decided that I wanted to try a piece of real removal in the deck; the Containment Priest and Eldrazi Displacer combo has great potential, but doesn’t come up quite as often as you would imagine.


Decklists for Round 3 were due shortly after the team event in Baltimore. I got a terrible case of the flu and was out for two weeks. I intended to play a five color humans deck because I wanted to try out Kambal, Consul of Allocation, but fever kept me from thinking clearly. I decided to run back Eldrazi White again! In my fevered state, I decided that Fairgrounds Warden was insane for some reason and that Mental Misstep needed to be in the deck.

Round 3

Artifacts (13)
Black Lotus
Chalice of the Void
Trinisphere
Mox Sapphire
Mox Ruby
Mox Pearl
Mox Jet
Mox Emerald
Mana Crypt
Thorn of Amethyst

Creatures (26)
Fairgrounds Warden
Containment Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Reality Smasher
Eldrazi Displacer
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (21)
Strip Mine
Karakas
Eldrazi Temple
Wasteland
Plains
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls

Sideboard (15)
Null Rod
Ghost Quarter
Disenchant
Fairgrounds Warden
Pithing Needle
Containment Priest
Mental Misstep

Fairgrounds Warden was actually pretty good. There are more effective and interesting alternatives like Palace Jailer, but the Warden only has a single white in its mana cost, which is what pushed me to try it in the first place. It plays well with Containment Priest to boot, and the three toughness can hold back some smaller threats. Mental Misstep, while not having the greatest synergy with the deck, was actually fine. It was great on the draw, where some annoying cards like Deathrite Shaman or Ancestral Recall might otherwise resolve before you can take action. It also doubled as a protection spell for my first threat. While Vintage doesn’t have a ton of removal spells in comparison to Modern or Legacy, a timely Swords to Plowshares can give your opponent a big opening; a second removal spell often means you fall too far behind to catch up. Again, it is a bit of a nonbo with Chalice of the Void, but that doesn’t particularly matter.

2-0 vs Mentor Gush
2-1 vs Tezzerator
1-2 vs Junk Hatebears
2-1 vs Dredge
0-2 vs Shops
2-0 vs 4 Color Leomancer

My decklist felt pretty good this round, and I’d likely try something like this again given the chance. 4 Fairgrounds Warden was probably excessive, but I like to have access to it (or another similar card) in the 75. I don’t like Dismember in an Ancient Tomb deck, but Swords to Plowshares or Blessed Alliance might be reasonable; in many of the matchups where you want removal (e.g. the mirror and pseudo-mirror, Shops), your taxing effects are coming out anyway.

I found myself trimming or cutting the Eldrazi Displacer and Containment Priest package somewhat commonly. I think those cards are important to the deck, but I wonder if their numbers in the main could be trimmed a bit. Displacer in particular was hard to cast, since Cavern of Souls very frequently names Human. I’d like to explore Vryn Wingmare in the maindeck again, both for the flying ability (Moat is rough) and for the taxing effect.


I feel like this deck has pretty good matchups across the board. I didn’t feel favored against the Junk Hatebears deck, but otherwise I felt at least even against everything else. The Shops matchup is a little awkward and somewhat draw dependent, but I’m never unhappy to be playing against it; both players have a pretty big number of bricks in their decks in game one, and the Shops player really needs a Mishra’s Workshop to pull ahead. I could see wanting another piece of hate or two for Dredge as well, but I only played against it once and don’t know for sure. While Eldrazi White doesn’t have the objective power of other Vintage decks, it does have a rather good set of tools that you can use to dismantle the gameplans of other decks.

13-3 at SCG Baltimore

I’m writing this article with a wicked case of the flu, so I apologize for any errors that remain.

I can’t overstate how excited I was for the Open in Baltimore. I knew I wanted one of my roommates and testing partners, Harley Cox, for the Modern portion of my team. Harley has been playing Affinity since it was Standard legal, so it’s no surprise that he opted to play that for the weekend. We did some testing with Bant Eldrazi and Grixis Delver, but decided his experience with Affinity would outweigh any deck selection advantage he could get by switching decks. It was difficult finding a Standard player, as my playgroup almost exclusively plays Legacy and Vintage. Mike Kerby, one of the managers of the SCG storefront, came to the rescue a couple of weeks before the event. Though he doesn’t really travel much for events these days, Kerby has snagged just about every Game Day Champion playmat in Roanoke for the last few years. I was thrilled to have him as our Standard pilot, and he settled on U/R Emerge for Standard. That left me on D&T to round on the team, and I decided on this list:

D&T 2/17/17

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extraction
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Batterskull

This is very similar to the list I ran in Louisville. I swapped out the Banisher Priest for a third Mirran Crusader, anticipating the rise of BUG decks and the decline of Eldrazi. I also opted to run Sword of War and Peace over Batterskull in the maindeck. *record screech* Yup, I cut one of the sacred, unquestioned cards from the maindeck. I’ve found that I don’t usually fetch Batterskull except against BUG, Burn, and Eldrazi. Batterskull frequently gets stranded in my hand, and I frequently have better things to do with my mana. Given that I was running three Mirran Crusaders and two Recruiters, I was fine with sacrificing a few percentage points against BUG decks in game one to drastically improve my Miracles, D&T, and combo matchups.

Thursday night before my weekly Legacy event, my decklist had a second Containment Priest and a Sword of Body and Mind in the sideboard over the two Surgical Extractions. In talking with Nick Miller right before that event, he reminded me that Baltimore had an unhealthy amount of good Lands players, so I reverted back to my two Surgicals to hedge against them. SoBaM proved to be incredible against the BUG decks, but very lackluster (or actively bad) elsewhere. If I had a 16th sideboard card, it would be SoBaM, and I would be 100% willing to play it moving forward when the time is right.

My personal record for the Open was 7-2, though my team’s record was 6-3. We narrowly missed day 2, but I’m still very happy with how our team did. With the exception of a couple of tough mulligan decisions, we largely all just piloted our own decks with little assistance from our teammates, as we all knew them very well. I took losses to two incredibly difficult matchups, Elves and Oops, All Spells, but I took down every reasonable matchup otherwise. Here’s the breakdown as well as some notable things about the event:

0-2 vs Elves
2-0 vs Aggro Loam
2-1 vs Infect
2-0 vs Miracles
0-2 vs Oops, All Spells
2-0 vs BUG Delver
2-0 vs D&T
2-0 vs D&T
2-1 vs UW Spirits

Vs Elves
I was on the play for both games. I had a turn three Prelate on four both games. It still wasn’t enough. Whomp whomp.

Vs Aggro Loam
My opponent fell for my trap in game two. He had a Wasteland on board, and could have Wasted my Rishadan Port during my end step. He does not. This allows me to Port his Thespian’s Stage during his upkeep. He responds by producing a Marit Lage, and I get to play a Karakas and bounce it on my turn.

Vs Miracles
SoWaP is nuts against Miracles in game one, where many decks have few or no real answers to it. At one point one his teammates looks over at our match and says to his other teammate, “It’s Counterbalance vs Aether Vial over there, and it looks pretty bad. We’d better win our matches.” SoWaP was brutal and got there with ease.

Vs D&T
Both of my D&T opponents sideboarded poorly for the mirror, keeping their Thalias in the deck. That cost both of them pretty dearly. One of my opponents played a Manriki-Gusari, which I believe is far inferior to SoWaP as a sideboard card.

Vs UW Stoneblade
I recognize the name Andrew Calderon from somewhere, and then remember that he placed at the GP with D&T. I smile and know that once again, my maindeck SoWaP is going to shine. “Mausoleum Wanderer, go.” Oh…that was unexpected. He was playing a UW Stoneblade deck that focused on creature-based disruptive threats. He actually ended up top 8’ing the Legacy Classic the next day, so he’s definitely on to something there. Paul Lynch shipped me a similar list a few months back, but this feels a bit more refined than what we had been trying. The sideboard in particular is a thing of beauty. Here’s the list. I suspect the deck might be a little land light, especially given the sideboard options, but it seems to be working for him.

Our team did fine for the day, and I was very happy with my personal record. I had plans to hang out with a friend on Sunday, but those fell through, so I ran the same 75 back for the Legacy Classic.

2-0 vs Sneak and Show
2-1 vs Jund
2-0 vs Shardless BUG
2-0 vs WB Rip/Helm Combo
2-0 vs Shardless BUG
2-1 vs Burn
ID vs BUG
ID vs BUG
Top 8- 1-2 vs Shardless BUG

Vs Sneak and Show
My opponent makes a joke about how he should probably just concede this round and get some food or something. Once I fetch my SoWaP, my opponent reads it, looks at his seven card hand with disdain, and scoops.

Vs Jund
I mulliganed to five in game one, and my opponent had a double Thoughtseize opener that shredded my chances of recovery. My opponent only showed me basic Forests and Swamps, so I thought he was just going to be a GB Rock style deck. The Sudden Shock and Punishing Fire were quite the surprise in game 2. My opponent knew he had the win easily, so he wisely concealed information about his deck.

Vs WB RiP/Helm Combo
In game one, I see the following card from my opponent: Plains, Swamp, Scrubland, Dark Ritual, Hymn to Tourach, Inquisition of Kozilek, and Thoughtseize. I’m not really sure what my opponent is trying to do. My initial guesses were some sort of Pox or Deadguy Ale deck, but the Ancient Tomb wouldn’t fit into either of those shells. It turns out that my opponent was on Rest in Peace and Helm of Obedience as a primary win condition, with recurring Eternal Scourge as the secondary win con. He was 3-0 before running into me, so there might be something there.

Vs Burn
My opponent has me dead on turn four on the play in game one, and I don’t really have any say in the matter. In games two and three, I’m able to connect once with a Batterskull to seal the deal and buy enough time to win. I had to Flickerwisp a Sulfuric Vortex to gain some life and win the race in game three.

Top 8 vs Shardless BUG
I wasn’t keeping an eye on the time, but this match probably lasted somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours. By the end of the match, Abe Corson was practically breathing down the neck of my opponent, encouraging him to play more quickly. I wasn’t thrilled about that fact, but I understand where he was coming from as a judge. Game one was a slog-fest where we both run out of spells. The game was decided by a fight over lands. I was keeping his Creeping Tar Pit in check with a Rishadan Port, but he eventually finds a Wasteland to get in the last three attacks. This was the only game over the course of the two events where I missed Batterskull in a game one scenario, and it was only because the game went abnormally long, with both players just drawing an absurd number of bricks.

By the time we get half way through game two, my friend Harley has had enough, and he decides to walk around the convention center for a little while. He returns, and it is still game 2. I probably end up bouncing Batterskull five or so times over the course of this game, which allowed me to recover from my initial mulligan to five.

In game 3, it’s my opponent’s turn for a mulligan to five. Luckily for him, he has an Ancestral Vision to help balance things out. The game evolves quickly to a very strange board state. My opponent has no lands, and only two Deathrite Shaman as sources of mana. I have a Rishadan Port or two, so any time my opponent does play a land, he will effectively only get one real use out of it. My opponent has to very carefully control his mana use, as there are a very finite number of lands in the graveyard, and if he gets too aggressive with advancing his board, he may leave himself unable to cast spells in the future. My deck fails to present me with a real threat, so he has enough time to tick down an Ancestral Vision. Given my poor position, I tried to get cute.

At my end step, I flickered out his only land, leaving him with just the two Deathrites as sources of mana. I have a Thalia in play. I was hoping my opponent would go to resolve his Ancestral Vision without activating his Deathrite, and since Deathrite isn’t a mana ability, he would then be unable to cast the card. Unfortunately, my opponent played on MTGO regularly, so he was familiar with the interaction. Once my opponent starts hitting land drops, I am quickly overwhelmed.


My record for the weekend (excluding the intentional draws) was 13-3. Of those, two losses were to very difficult matchups, Elves and Oops, All Spells. In matchups I could expect to win, I was 12-1. I’m very happy with that result, and I think my deckbuilding choices really paid off. SoWaP in the main made short work of the mirror, Miracles, and Sneak and Show matchups, and would have been very relevant in a few others if the games had gone longer. The three Mirran Crusaders felt correct; I played against BUG decks four times, but I would have played against it twice more if I didn’t have the opportunity to intentionally draw in. I tested with a fourth Mirran Crusader in the main, but the deck started to feel too top-heavy with it. In sixteen rounds, I only missed Batterskull in the maindeck in a single round; that’s enough to affirm my choice to move it to the side. It’s a bit unfortunate that I wanted it in the top 8 match, but I’m not going to let that discourage me from a choice that seems correct.


I’d like to take a minute here at the end to talk about something that I feel slightly bad about. In round 8, I intentionally drew with Cody Setree, who was on the BUG True-Name deck. I offered the draw, and he accepted. We sign the slip, and then table one starts doing some math and it becomes clear that it may not be 100% safe for Stephen Mann’s opponent to draw. Cody was the best X-1, and my math showed that an X-1-1 would be making top 8, so I legitimately thought he was locked. It looks like table 1 is going to play out their round. I asked my opponent if he was still fine with the draw, and he says he is. Stephen Mann ends up playing his match out and loses, causing him to become the X-1-1 with better breakers. Cody ends up getting 9th on breakers. I could have afforded to play this round out and still made top 8 in all likelihood, so it feels bad that my decision to draw ended up putting my opponent out of top 8 based on breakers. I don’t know how much of my opponent’s decision was based on thinking he was safe vs how much of it was based on not wanting to play against D&T, but I felt like I wouldn’t be giving a full tournament report without bringing that up.

On a more positive note, I really enjoyed the Team Constructed format, and I hope SCG continues to run this format in the future. Given that the event hit the attendance cap a few days before the event, I expect we will see more of these in the future. Sometimes playing at competitive REL can feel stressful, but everyone seemed to be in a legitimately good mood over the weekend, since they always had their friends around. I met some wonderful people over the weekend, and as always, it was a blast discussing D&T with those of you I saw at the event. Thanks for your donations and advice, and I’ll look forward to seeing you all at future events!

Teambuilding and SCG Baltimore

The next big Legacy event on my schedule really isn’t a true Legacy event, as odd as that is to say. It’s the Team Constructed event SCG is hosting in Baltimore. This particular Team Constructed event is quite the doozie in that each player will be playing either Standard, Modern, or Legacy for their team. Today I’d like to go over some of my thoughts about the effect this event structure is going to have on deckbuilding and metagame choices for the weekend. More so than my usual content, what follows is opinion, though I do think these are all reasonable deductions.


Prediction 1: Teams will be built around Legacy players. The Legacy player will likely be the strongest player on the team.

I believe that the average “grinder” level player is going to be well-versed in Standard and Modern out of necessity. Given the changes to the SCG Tour (or whatever it calls itself on any given Thursday), that’s just the way things are. Standard and Modern Opens/Classics are the norm these days, with Legacy events becoming a bit of a treat sprinkled here and there. Due to the changes in prize support to the IQs, Standard and Modern IQs are also going to outnumber Legacy IQs by a pretty substantial margin. On the GP circuit as well, Legacy events are relatively limited. It’s not that people aren’t playing Legacy and promoting Legacy events, it’s that there are far fewer Legacy events than events of the other two formats. My point here is that the average grinder is going to have much more practice playing Standard and Modern than Legacy, and this has a pretty big impact on team building.

I think, relatively speaking, for most people, it will be easy to find a Standard and Modern player. Finding a Legacy player might be a bit trickier. This isn’t the sort of event where you hand your buddy a burn deck and wish them the best of luck; instead, this is an event where you *need* every player to pull their weight. Accordingly, I think the best teams for the event will be built around the Legacy players. I expect players who have their names attached to a Legacy deck to anchor many of these teams. Joe Losset on Miracles, Tom Ross on Infect, Daryl Ayers or David Long on Lands, Bryant Cook on TES…you get the idea. As a side effect of that, I do think that the strongest player on the team will likely be the Legacy player. Your Legacy player is likely either A) a specialist who has a disdain for other formats or B) a player who plays enough Magic and has been for playing long enough to be well-versed in Legacy as well as other formats. I’m giddy at the thought of the great matches I’m going to get to play this weekend.


Prediction 2: Legacy deck choices will be disproportionately skewed towards the top of the metagame, especially Miracles.

One of the cool things about your typical Legacy event is that if you own a deck, you can just come and play without many changes to your deck. This means that there are tons of random people showing up with decks that don’t even register on the metagame scale these days. Maverick, Enchantress, MUD, Nic Fit, Goblins…you’ll realistically run into deck like these from time to time. Yet this isn’t a typical Legacy event, now is it? Do you want a Merfolk player as your Legacy anchor? I doubt it. I’d find another Legacy player before I teamed with someone playing a deck that I actively perceived as bad. Accordingly, expect fewer “random” decks than you would on a normal weekend.

There are two not-so-closely-guarded secrets about Legacy deck choices. The first is that people play what they know. Don’t expect established players to suddenly switch decks for the weekend. Legacy, perhaps more so than any other format, rewards your knowledge of matchups and interactions. Having years of practice piloting a deck really pays off and rewards you with slight edges against your opponents that add up quickly. The second is that experienced Legacy players gravitate towards Miracles with a strange affinity. Miracles may not always be the best choice for any given weekend, but it is rarely a bad one. The deck has a great degree of consistency and flexibility, giving experienced players tons of opportunities to wiggle their way out of tough spots using their format experience. People often joke about the “sea of Miracles” at the top tables of events, but there is quite a bit of truth in that friendly comment.


Prediction 3: Legacy pilots who frequently switch decks will play a BUG deck.

There are plenty of Legacy players who own a substantial portion of the cards in the format and play a little bit of everything. These players often switch from one flavor of Delver to another, or play whatever blue deck they perceive to be the best for the weekend. Given all of the recent hype surrounding both Reid Duke’s deck from GP:Louisville and Fatal Push, I think many of these sorts of players will be messing around with BUG decks of various natures. BUG Delver had already been on the rise recently, and I expect Fatal Push will cause more players to revisit that archetype. Shardless BUG, though currently on a bit of a decline, is another one of those decks that is rarely a bad choice; its overall high card quality and resiliency steal plenty of games.

This means that we’ve got ~5 different BUG archetypes to consider for the weekend:

BUG Leovold
BUG Delver
Shardless BUG
Other, less aggressive BUG Fatal Push decks (e.g. Standstill, Snapcaster-based control, etc.)
Aluren

If we lump all of these together, I’d expect that BUG decks will make up at least 10% of the expected field, with 15% or more not being outside the realm of possibility.


I’ll be teaming with two of my friends from Roanoke, Mike Kerby (Standard) and Harley Cox (Modern), for this event. Both formats have had relatively big shake ups recently, so we have quite a bit of work to do in testing those two formats in the next two weeks or so. I’m feeling pretty good about 74/75 of the cards in my Legacy deck, with Sword of Body and Mind being the loose slot. While it overperforms against BUG, it’s mediocre elsewhere. It’s likely that card gets the axe to bring Sword of Fire and Ice back to the main, but I want to get in more games before I abandon SoBaM too early. SoBaM is proving to be cripplingly good against the BUG decks, but very mediocre elsewhere. I have a couple of other interesting ideas I want to try out, but time will likely be the limiting factor on that front. In addition to prepping for this event, I need to play out the top 4 of a local Legacy league and get in my matches for a Vintage league. Turns out Thalias are good in that format too…

The New New Tech

Today I just want to give you all a quick look at where I’m at with testing. Friday I’ll be posting my writeup for the BUG Leovold matchup, but after reading Sean Brown’s great article a few minutes ago, I figured I should post something real quick as a follow up.

Fatal Push, True-Name Nemesis, and Leovold, Emissary of Trest are currently redefining the Legacy metagame. I think it is foolish to not prepare for that future. I’m working on fighting the new tech with my next level tech. The decklist I’ve been testing for about the last two weeks is as follows, and it is going to raise some eyebrows…

D&T 1/25/17

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Body and Mind
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extractions
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Batterskull

Yeah, I’ll give you a minute to take that in. I have cut Sword of Fire and Ice from the deck completely and moved Batterskull to the sideboard. These cuts make room for Sword of War and Peace and Sword of Body and Mind in the main. As a whole, I’ve really been disappointed with Batterskull recently. I almost never fetch it, with the exceptions being the BUG and Eldrazi matchups. Four years ago, cheating a Batterskull in was game-warping. These days, the threats and answers have gotten much better, and it’s rare that the little fellow just goes all the way. I was tired of drawing that card, and I’m consistently fearing it getting stuck in my hand like the Progenitus in an Elves deck. I had been considering cutting it for about a year, but the resurgence of the Eldrazi decks put that idea on the back burner. I never had a reason to pull the trigger until now.

Sword of Body and Mind started out as a sideboard card for me. I however, didn’t like having two pieces of equipment in the sideboard; there simply was not room. One piece of equipment needed to go. I’ve been championing SoWaP as a sideboard cards for years and it’s probably going my trademark card at this point. Given how useful it is against Miracles and the mirror, I thought it was time to give it a promotion. Once I did that, I realized that if I moved SoBaM to the main, I would be able to fetch up four colors of protection in the main… *eyebrow raises*

My current deck configuration was born from that line of thought, and it has been testing very well. It’s possible that the Batterskull should just get the axe completely, but sometimes you need a non-white body against Dread of Night or an opposing SoWaP, so I’m hesitant to cut it entirely. I thought that I would miss the card draw from SoFaI, but it hasn’t been as much of an issue as I initially thought it would be.

Other than that, I’ve gone up to a 2-2 split of Mirran Crusader and Serra Avenger in the main, cutting my Banisher Priest to do so. Banisher Priest and Palace Jailer don’t line up well against True-Name Nemesis and Leovold, Emissary of Trest, so I cut them for cards that do. Serra Avenger flies over both of these, but going up to a third copy of it would likely mean I’d have to go down from two copies of Cavern of Souls, a deckbuilding decision I’m not in favor of right now. Mirran Crusader has natural protection from Fatal Push, so having a second copy around can’t be a bad thing.

I’m still playing around with this idea as a whole, so I’d love to hear you all call me a madman or genius. Happy testing!

The Sideboard Box and Local Metagaming

I have a box of shameful white cards. I like to imagine everyone does, though my box of shame might be a bit bigger than yours… This box contains the cards that have fallen out of favor in D&T over the years, flex cards that aren’t quite right for the main at the moment, fringe sideboard cards that are potentially good in odd metagames, and failed experiments that didn’t quite make the deck. I usually carry at least a portion of this box around anytime I attend a small event. At a large event, there’s pretty much nothing I will see that will make me want to adjust my deck on the fly. However, at a smaller event, it’s very likely that a few tweaks can really improve your chances at spiking the event. Today I’d like to walk you through some of the stuff floating around my pile o’ D&T “playables.” Some of these might be just the thing you need to wreck your local metagame.


The Burn/Punishing Fire Hate Pile

I don’t mind playing against a Burn deck or two over the course of an event; however, I don’t want to play it all day without taking a few precautions. Similarly, a field full of things like Jund and Lands that want to Punishing Fire out all my creatures can be a little nerve wracking. These cards can help you tear those matchups open:

Beat the Red Decks!

Spells (9)
Absolute Law
Kor Firewalker
Warmth
Circle of Protection: Red
Lone Missionary
Aerial Responder
Kitchen Finks
Burrenton Forge-tender
Fiendslayer Paladin

Absolute Law and Warmth are great Enlightened Tutor targets, if you are still running that card. The remaining creatures have a certain degree of utility. Burrenton Forge-tender is a defensive, tutorable bullet, whereas the remainder of the cards are more general, lifegain critters with various scenarios where each is better. Aerial Responder is a card that I’d never play in the sideboard, but could be an acceptable Serra Avenger or Mirran Crusader substitute in the right room. Fiendslayer Paladin isn’t as objectively powerful as Avenger or Crusader, though I know a few people from MtG:Salvation really liked it as an option some time ago. Kor Firewalker is the one I’d be most likely to shove in the deck in a vacuum, as it stalls opposing creatures while also gaining life. That being said, WW can be a touch tough on turn two, so many people turn to the enchantment options that are more easily castable. Of those options, Warmth or CoP:Red will wreck Burn the hardest, while Absolute Law is great against most decks with red removal.


The Anti-Combo Pile

D&T is pretty well-positioned against mid-to-slow speed combo decks, but sometimes you bring the wrong set of hate for a room and get swamped, or your opponents go off a bit too quickly. These cards can help you adjust:

Hate out the Combo!

Spells (10)
Chalice of the Void
Thorn of Amethyst
Enlightened Tutor
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Vryn Wingmare
Relic of Progenitus
Surgical Extraction
Grafdigger’s Cage
Mindbreak Trap
Faerie Macabre

Of these cards, only Vryn Winmare and Spirit of the Labyrinth are reasonably maindeckable. The remainder serve as cards that interact on slightly different angles against the various combo decks of the format. In particular, it’s very easy to swap around your graveyard hate to maximize your chances at beating specific combo decks.

For example, let’s say that you walk around a room and see a ton of Dredge and Elves as well as an Oops, All Spells deck. Grafdigger’s Cage is amazing against all three of these decks. Cutting a Rest in Peace or two for Cages would probably give you about the same percentage points in the Dredge matchup while vastly improving your Elves matchup “for free” and speeding up your hate a turn against Oops.

On the other hand, what if you see a room full of U/B Reanimator, Dredge, and Lands? This could be a good time to trim your Containment Priests for Surgical Extractions. Reanimator tends to play favorites like Massacre to deal with Containment Priest, Lands has Punishing Fire, and Dredge has Firestorm. All three of these decks struggle in interacting with Surgical, so that would seem like a safe bet to me. Sugical on Griselbrand, Bridge from Below, or Life from the Loam might (effectively) win you the game on the spot.


The Removal Pile

Look, sometimes you just need to destroy things…

Boom Goes the Dynamite

Spells (12)
Seal of Cleansing
Leonin Relic-Warder
Disenchant
Ratchet Bomb
Mangara of Corondor
Sunlance
Path to Exile
Palace Jailer
Blessed Alliance
Holy Light
Armageddon
Cataclysm

D&T has Flickerwisp, Swords, and Council’s Judgment as the standard options for removal (with Path starting to become standard as well), but sometimes you need a little bit more. The biggest choice you have to make in adding extra removal to the deck is speed. Lower cost options (e.g. Sunlance, Leonin Relic-Warder) tend to have some amount of limitation or drawback, whereas higher cost options like Mangara have more flexibility. Many of these cards will tutorable via Recruiter or Enlightened Tutor. Some of these cards are extremely good in fringe scenarios, but might not be perfect for the normal metagame as a whole. Ratchet Bomb and Holy Light, for example, offer the potential for massive blowout potential (e.g. cleaning the board after a huge Empty the Warrens, but aren’t necessarily the broad answers our sideboards need for a generic event.

Of these, Armageddon and Cataclysm are of special note. Armageddon is an odd sort of tempo card in many cases; you get ahead on board and drop the bomb, knowing that you can likely close out the game before your opponent can recover. Cataclysm tends to be more of a defensive or catch-up card. When you are behind on board against, say, Shardless, it can be used to sweep a couple of planeswalkers off the board. Cataclysm has huge upsides against some of the fringe decks of the format (e.g. MUD, Enchantress), but rarely wins a game on its own against the tiered decks. Against Lands, for example, a Cataclysm buys a ton of time, but you really need a Rest in Piece beyond that to lock things up. Cataclysm used to be the hate card of choice to beat Miracles, but now that the deck is less reliant on big mana threats like Jace, the Mindsculptor and Entreat the Angels, it’s now more likely that the Miracles deck can recover post-Cataclysm.


The Flex Slot Pile

Prior to the printing of Recruiter of the guard, D&T had a ton of flex slots. These days there is a bit less room for experimentation. These are the reasonable cards I tried in various configurations in about the past year.

Bonus dudes

(8)
Aven Mindcensor
Leonin Arbiter
Brimaz, King of Oreskos
Anafenza, Kin Tree Spirit
Eldrazi Displacer
Restoration Angel
Blade Splicer
Thalia, Heretic Cathar

Aven Mindcensor and Leonin Arbiter play well together (and even better with Ghost Quarter and Path to Exile), but don’t particularly go well with the Stoneforge package of the deck. Brimaz is great in a room full of Miracles and decks with red-based removal. Anafenza was a card I thought might have potential, but I never got it to work. Displacer and Restoration Angel are very reasonable cards in current D&T (and I played against both in Louisville), serving as the 5th Flickerwisp with great upsides in certain matchups. This isn’t an exhaustive list. I’ve played my fair share of Judge’s Familiar and Weathered Wayfarer, but this is a pretty good feel for what I carry around.


Alternatives to the Norm
The lands and equipment in D&T are pretty stock these days. I do, however, adjust things a bit from time to time.

Flex lands and equipment

Spells (3)
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Body and Mind
Manriki-Gusari
Lands (7)
Flagstones of Trokair
Dust Bowl
Mishra’s Factory
Horizon Canopy
Ghost Quarter
Eiganjo Castle
Sea Gate Wreckage

I’ve already written about my thoughts on flex lands and equipment, so I won’t go into much detail here. I will say that Sword of Body and Mind might have its day in the sun soon if Reid Duke’s GP Louisville deck trends upwards in popularity.


We Can Go Deeper

Hate Hate Hate

Splash (3)
Orzhov Pontiff
Magus of the Moon
Gaddok Tegg

Beat BUG (2)
Baneslayer Angel
Wilt-Leaf Liege

Tutor for cute things (2)
Angel of Invention
Phyrexian Metamorph

Splashing a single card as a Recruiter target is somewhat reasonable, and it’s not all that uncommon to stumble upon it. I’ve never been a huge fan of splashing (though I have experimented pretty heavily with every color combination). Feel free to visit my various Deckbuilding pages on Splashing Colors if you want to read more about that.

In a room full of BUG, you can do some dirty things. Wilt-Leaf Liege makes Hymn to Tourach or Liliana of the Veil considerably less threatening. Baneslayer Angel is borderline unbeatable if you’re willing to go that big (which I do not advocate doing unless you are already on the Restoration Angel plan). These two cards are mana intensive though, so I usually don’t recommend them. Most of what they can accomplish is oftentimes done with a Crusader without getting cute. These cards lead to blowouts, but are probably win-more.

The final two cards caught my eye when Recruiter came out. It’s not like they are amazing against anything in particular, but these cards are on my watch list. Angel of Invention is a tutorable bomb, and Metamorph has the potential to be exactly what you need in a weird situation. These are currently what I refer to as “fun-ofs,” card that you play in your local metagame to try them out and have some laughs, but probably don’t make their way to the floor of an Open level event or higher.


Today’s article was a request from a fan, so I hope it was useful to a few of you. I really appreciate the support (emails, donations, sharing decklists and data, just coming up and saying hello) that I’ve received over the past month. It’s really validating for me to hear that you crushed your first event with D&T after reading things on my site or that my tech of Sword of War and Peace was particularly great for you. I think I said this previously, but I enjoyed GP Louisville more than any other Magic event. Cashing the GP was great and all, but it was really interacting with 50+ D&T pilots over the course of the weekend that made my trip amazing. In trying to make Thraben University an even better resource, I’m now going to commit to doing an article or new piece of content of some kind for the deck each week. I’m currently planning on releasing new stuff on Friday, though I’ll likely change that from time to time if I have a tournament that weekend or am planning on doing major playtesting over the weekend. I’ve got quite a bit of testing to do prior to the Baltimore Team Constructed event. I might as well share what I’m learning with you all!

D&T Pre/Post-GP Louisville

I agonized over my decklist for GP Louisville for the week leading up to the event. To be honest, I wasn’t 100% comfortable with my numbers until Friday afternoon. Given my finish, I ultimately settled on something that was very good for the event, but that doesn’t mean that my decklist was perfect. This article is going to be long and really look in detail at how I painstakingly built my deck for this event. If you want to skip to analysis of the event itself and my comparisons to Craig Wescoe’s deck, skip down to the first horizontal line. If you want to see where I think the format is going and my recommendations for the future, skip to the second horizontal line.

Let’s start by looking at what I settled on:

Phil Gallagher, 48th place GP Louisville

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Banisher Priest
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extractions
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Sword of War and Peace

Any good decklist needs to be built for the metagame for a specific weekend. By the time a decklist is published publicly, it is likely outdated. I built this list expecting the following to be common (in rough order of expected popularity):

Miracles
BUG decks (Shardless, Delver, Leovold decks)
Sneak and Show
D&T
Eldrazi
Other Delver decks (UR, Grixis, 4-color)
B/R Reanimator

Looking generically at these matchups, Eldrazi and B/R Reanimator are unfavorable, while the rest of the field looks positive. I need to make decisions that allow me to beat Eldrazi and B/R Reanimator while also not significantly decreasing my matchup percentages against the rest of the expected decks. I also need to have enough generically good cards to adjust my deck against the randomness a GP can present in the initial rounds.

Let’s start with the lands. I recently had been advocating going down to two copies of Karakas. The deck is more mana hungry than ever with the printing of Recruiter of the Guard, so drawing the second copy of Karakas does feel pretty bad. Some players, Bahra, for example, have even gone up to the 24th land to cast the constant stream of cards and gain a little extra utility. Given that Sneak and Show and Reanimator are much easier matchups with Karakas in play, I opted to run the third copy this weekend.

After that, the deck can afford 2-3 flex slots. I like the stability basic Plains offers, so I only run two flex lands. The primary front runners were Cavern of Souls, Mishra’s Factory, and Horizon Canopy. I expected Miracles to be the best performing deck of the event, so it’s better to either make my creatures uncounterable or to have an extra threat stapled to a land. Given how blue my prediction for the metagame was, double Cavern of Souls seemed correct. I also would not have blamed someone for running three flex lands and running one of each, though I never think Horizon Canopy is correct given how much Burn tends to appear on day one of a GP. I also dislike Horizon Canopy more and more as our deck gets more mana hungry.

That brings us to the creature base. I think the following is the untouchable core:

D&T Creature Core

Creatures (21)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp

That left me with five slots to consider. I feel like it’s important to have some number of true finishers in the deck. Going too far down the hate bear line can leave you with an inability to close out games quickly or push damage through a stalled board. Given the expected popularity of BUG decks, double Mirran Crusader seemed like an obvious choice. Mirran Crusader also has the potential to close the games the quickest when paired when equipment, a trait that I very much value in a GP field where you might get paired against the weird stuff early on in the day. I rounded out the third slot with a Serra Avenger, as it pushes damage better in the mirror and against random things like True-Name Nemesis; it also is a great pivot card off Vial which can quickly move us from a defensive to offensive role. Two slots remain.

I want one more defensive card for the deck. That means either Mom #4 or Sanctum Prelate number two. Mom #4 is subpar against Eldrazi and Miracles, but strong in the mirror and against the BUG decks. Sanctum Prelate #2 is amazing against combo decks, Miracles, and Lands in particular, but will raise my curve a bit; it performs poorly against Shardless in most cases, as their varied mana costs make it difficult to shut off multiple angles of attack. Given that I previously made a choice that improved my Miracles matchup, I opt to run the 4th Mom.

That leaves the final slot of the deck in question. I had not done anything to improve the Eldrazi matchup yet. That means I really want something that hedges against that matchup. There are three real choices here: Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Banisher Priest, and Palace Jailer. THC, while being great against Eldrazi specifically, has proven to be very underwhelming in the post-Conspiracy 2 world. It comes down too slowly to matter on the draw in many cases, and it doesn’t do a ton unless accelerated out early. It also is very poor off an Aether Vial.

So Banisher Priest or Jailer? While the cards look similar, their functionality is completely different. Banisher Priest is a tempo card. You seek to quickly remove a threat or blocker so that you can finish a game. Banisher Priest is at its best when backed up by a Mother of Runes or protected by equipment since it is soft to removal. Palace Jailer is a control card. You want to become the monarch and turtle up. You will eventually drown your opponent in cards or press their resources so tightly that they lose to the insurmountable advantage. You can blink Palace Jailer for absurd value, but losing the monarch status will likely lose you the game. Palace Jailer is going to be soft to decks that can flood the board with many disposable creatures (e.g. Young Pyromancer) or to decks that can deploy haste or flash creatures which can threaten to steal monarch status.

Banisher Priest is a safe choice. Palace Jailer is the high-risk, high-reward choice. I opt for Banisher Priest so that I can always safely leave my Vial on three for the Eldrazi matchup and so that Banisher Priest will always be a live draw. I found that Jailer sometimes required me to wait a turn to tick the Vial up to four or that I sometimes needed to wait for the 4th land. I didn’t want to take the chance that I’d end the game with it in my hand (or that I’d lose the monarch status and hate myself), so I played the objectively less powerful card. In talking with various D&T players over the course of the day, the majority of them had *very* positive experiences with Jailer though, and I’ve had plenty of amazing games with it myself during testing.

That brings us to the sideboard. Most of D&T’s sideboard is fixed at this point. Given the expected presence of Reanimator, my flex slots were going to be dedicated to additional graveyard hate. In my mind, the choice was between Faerie Macabre and Surgical Extraction. Against R/B Reanimator specifically, Faerie Macabre is much better. It gets around the tax of Chancellor of the Annex and also plays around your opponent dumping two creatures with Faithless Looting and following up an Exhume. However, against most of the rest of the format, Surgical Extraction is going to have much more utility. Faerie Macabre has the random upside of being tutorable with Recruiter, but when you are really going to need to tutor that up over Containment Priest if you’ve safely made it to that stage of the game? I opt for a package of 2 Rest in Peace, 2 Surgical Extraction, and one Containment Priest. I really wanted a second Containment Priest, but I wasn’t willing to drop any of the other cards for it.


So, how did my called shots go? Eldrazi performed worse than I expected, but I was otherwise on point with my predictions. That left my decklist in a great position for the weekend. Speaking of decklists…

Craig Wescoe, Top 8 GP Louisville

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Flickerwisp
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Recruiter of the Guard
Palace Jailer
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Mirran Crusader
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
Æther Vial
Batterskull
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Lands (23)
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
Karakas
Horizon Canopy
Cavern of Souls
10 Plains

Sideboard (15)
Containment Priest
Council’s Judgment
Ethersworn Canonist
Faerie Macabre
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Path to Exile
Pithing Needle
Relic of Progenitus
Rest in Peace

For those of you with your pulse to the D&T community, this is very reminiscent of the decks Enevoldson has been recommending recently. It’s very apparent that Enevoldson and Wescoe were considering all the same issues I was. While Wescoe came down on the other side of the debate in both the instances of Surgical vs Faerie Macabre and Palace Jailer vs Banisher Priest, he just opted to hedge in different directions than I did. The real differences are in two other choices, his decision to run a Relic of Progenitus over the second Rest in Peace and his decision to run a Spirit of the Labyrinth.

D&T has a relative lack of good options if you want to run a two drop in one of the flex slots. SotL is a fragile body, but one that serves similar roles to Thalia and Revoker. That is, it provides a hateful effect that limits the opponent’s ability to do their traditional role. I haven’t played SotL since the Treasure Cruise era, as I find it just tends to die and grow the Tarmogoyf by two. It does, however, have real value as a tutor target for matchups like Elves and Omni, so it’s really a reasonable inclusion.

I don’t like Relic of Progenitus, but I think that’s because I play the card differently than Enevoldson does, who has been running one for years. Based on what I’ve read, he boards in Relic as a colorless cantrip in many matches where the traditional core of the deck is weak. He uses it as a substitute for weak maindeck cards which sometimes need to come out, but other options aren’t that great. I like the hard hate of Rest in Peace over that versatility, and I don’t like leaving up mana to pop Relic.


In testing for the GP, I imagined that some sort of Leovold, Emissary of Trest deck was going to be the breakout deck of the event. Various 3-4 color versions had been popping up here and there, but I wasn’t quite sure which version was going to stick Let’s look at our new boogieman.

Reid Duke, Top 8 GP Louisville

Planeswalkers (3)
Jace, the Mind Sculptor

Creatures (15)
Deathrite Shaman
Noble Hierarch
Tarmogoyf
True-Name Nemesis
Leovold, Emissary of Trest

Spells (21)
Ponder
Thoughtseize
Brainstorm
Daze
Force of Will
Murderous Cut
Abrupt Decay
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sylvan Library
Lands (21)
Forest
Island
Tropical Island
Bayou
Underground Sea
Misty Rainforest
Polluted Delta
Verdant Catacombs
Wasteland

Sideboard (15)
Umezawa’s Jitte
Thoughtseize
Submerge
Pithing Needle
Flusterstorm
Mindbreak Trap
Surgical Extraction
Dread of Night
Painful Truths
Nihil Spellbomb

This deck seeks to power out a powerful turn two play off a turn one mana accelerator. A simple plan, but one that is problematic for our deck. True-Name Nemesis has always been a problem card for our deck, as it stalls the board AND murders us when paired with equipment. Leovold’s 3/3 body similarly stalls the two power toughness creatures of our deck, while also dampening the impact of Wasteland and Port. Even a turn three Jace can sometimes be crippling on one of our slower draws. The sideboard also includes some hard hitters like Dread of Night and another copy of Jitte. I’m not actually sure why the Dread of Nights are necessary; I imagine this deck does very well against us, but it may be hedging against the generic popularity of D&T at the moment more so than out of a need for the cards to win the matchup. If this deck catches on in popularity, it likely means bad things for us. Other than the obvious, let’s look at why.

Our flex slots are going to line up poorly against this deck. Serra Avenger flies over True-Name, but can’t defend against a Leovold well; it won’t even trade with Leovold if the opponent has a Noble Hierarch for an exalted trigger. Mirran Cruaser walls or attacks through Leovold, but is stalled by True-Name. Banisher Priest performs poorly against Leovold, and Palace Jailer is very sad in the face of True-Name. Oh…that’s not good! Furthermore, this deck is a perfect shell for a Fatal Push or two once Aether Revolt is legal, and that card is going to answer everything in the deck except Crusader.

If I were going to play in a big event next weekend, I’d probably flip-flop the numbers of my Mirran Crusaders and Serra Avengers and call that good. Since the deck runs four True-Names and only two Leovold, it’s more important to push the aggression in the air. A stalled game is just going to give them time to find Jace or Jitte. If Eldrazi continues to perform poorly, I’d also be comfortable dropping the Banisher Priest from the deck for another relevant body. I could then be on a 2-2 or 1-3 Crusader and Avenger split. A one-of Restoration Angel might not be the worst idea either, as it could ambush Leovold and still fly over True-Name; it would dodge the Abrupt Decays in the matchup like Crusader, though it would be more vulnerable to Daze.

If this deck becomes a substantial portion of the metagame moving forward, going to the third Cavern of Souls and a Scrubland or two to run a singleton Orzhov Pontiff out of the sideboard is reasonable, as is switching one of the Paths out for a card that can answer True-Name cleanly such as Blessed Alliance. On the equipment front, you usually fetch SoFaI against True-Name decks to push damage, but both sides of the trigger are a losing proposition against Leovold. Accordingly, I’d consider Sword of Body and Mind as tutorable card that gives both True-Name and Leovold fits; it offers both sets of protection that you would want for the matchup while also not triggering Leovold.

Yup, I did just end an article by saying SoBaM was potentially good. Deal with it.

48th at GP Louisville!

I came. I saw. I made my opponents’ noncreature spells cost one more mana. I had been testing extensively for GP Louisville since about November, although a number of factors (travel, work, holidays) kept me from producing much content in the last few weeks. I took off Friday and Monday from work (a big deal in the world of teaching, let me tell you) to take full advantage of this GP experience. I was setting myself up for a good run for a GP, or a fine vacation in Louisville if that didn’t pan out. Here’s the list I submitted Friday afternoon:

D&T 1/9/17

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Banisher Priest
Mirran Crusader

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Surgical Extractions
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Sword of War and Peace

I’m not going to talk about why I made the deck choices I did, changes I want to make to the deck, or compare my list to Craig Wescoe’s list (That will be a separate article later this week, don’t worry!). Today is just going to be my tournament report, which is actually going to begin with Thursday night.

I ran my list through a small Eternal Extravaganza 4-rounder satellite on Thursday night to just make sure that the list felt solid. Spoilers, it felt just about perfect.

2-0 vs Shardless
2-0 vs Eldrazi
1-2 vs ANT
2-1 vs D&T

A couple of interesting things came up in this little event. The first is how Banisher Priest and Fiend Hunter differ. If Fiend Hunter is removed with the trigger on the stack, the creature will be exiled forever. If Banisher Priest is removed with the trigger on the stack, the creature never leaves play. My Eldrazi opponent had a creature equipped with Jitte. My opponent could have used Jitte counters to remove the Banisher Priest with the trigger on the stack, and his creature would never have left play; then he wouldn’t have had to pay two mana to reequip his Jitte. Instead, my opponent let the trigger resolve, then killed my creature, causing his creature to blink in and out of play. Paying that two mana the following turn to equip Jitte again likely cost him the game in the long run, as it was a big tempo swing. The little interactions really matter!

Secondly, Sword of Light and Shadow is garbage. My opponent fetched it up in the mirror, and I just killed them before it had time to matter. SoLaS is very slow to get active, and it’s actually rare that both sides of the trigger actually happen. In the matchups where you would want it for protection (Maverick, the mirror, Miracles, Stoneblade), the primary forms of removal don’t put creatures into the graveyard. They instead sent creatures to exile (e.g. Swords to Plowshares, Path to Exile, Council’s Judgment) or to the library (i.e. Terminus). It’s much better to play Sword of War and Peace, which has extreme upsides. More on that soon…

Finally, make your opponent play it out when they are comboing off. Always. My ANT opponent cast an Ad Nauseum with a storm of five and at least seven cards in graveyard, one of which is a Cabal Ritual. My opponent stops after revealing land, land, Cabal Ritual, Dark Ritual, Dark Ritual, Gitaxian Probe, Tendrils of Agony, and Chrome Mox. My opponent stops because they think they have the line of imprint Gitaxian Probe on Chrome Mox, cast the three rituals, and cast Tendrils of Agony for exactly twenty. I then stop my opponent, and review their graveyard, as I have Surgical Extraction in hand. This is where things get fun.

I cannot Surgically Extract Cabal Ritual. If I do so, I add one to the storm count and lose two life, meaning my opponent can Tendrils me without the Cabal Ritual. My opponent actually stopped too early (they had three life left when they stopped). If you look at the above scenario again, my opponent actually does not have an initial black mana unless they imprint one of their rituals. Uh oh! Given that I reviewed their graveyard, my opponent assumes I have Surgical. Thus, my opponent has to imprint the Cabal Ritual, Gitiaxan Probe, and hit a castable spell that is either free or costs exactly one black mana. If they do not, they are deal to my board. Unfortunately, my opponent hits the Disfigure and wins the game at one life. *shrug*

Anyway, this is supposed to be a GP report, but my rounds before the event were interesting enough to discuss. Here’s the abridged version:

0-2 vs UW Stoneblade
2-1 vs Nic Fit (Siege Rhino version)
0-2 vs Burn
2-0 vs UR Delver
2-0 vs Red Stompy (Chandra, Torch of Defiance, Thunderbreak Reagent)
2-1 vs Burn
2-0 vs D&T
0-2 vs D&T
2-0 vs D&T
2-1 vs Dredge
2-0 vs 4-color Delver
2-0 vs Omni
2-0 vs Miracles
2-1 vs Eldrazi
ID vs Miracles

I’m not going to write up everything, but here are the notable things and explanations of my losses.

Round 1: 0-2 vs Stoneblade:
Have you ever looked at your Planeswalker Points page and said, “Crap, I’m just short of byes again?!?!” Yeah, me too. In retrospect, I should have gotten off my butt and attended another GP to play side events and rack up the Planeswalker points I needed for my byes. Sometimes the biggest mistakes you make actually happen before the event begins. I lose game one to an unchecked Jace with a follow up Council’s Judgmentfor my Sword of Fire and Ice. I lose game two by flooding out. My opponent is at six life, I have a Mirran Crusader and a Sword of War and Peace. He has a True-Name Nemesis. I need a flier, a Council’s Judgment, Sword of Fire and Ice, a Mother of Runes, or any two creatures to push the final points of damage. I proceed to draw lands for the rest of the game. This was the only round I lost due to the deck failing to deliver cards. I start my day in the crap bracket, which is not where you want to be when your deck is built to beat the top tier of the metagame.

Round 2: 2-1 vs Nic Fit
Nic Fit is a pretty bad matchup. They have bigger threats than we do, a sweeper in the form of Pernicious Deed, and our mana denial package lines up poorly against their basic lands and creature-based threats. Sigarda, Host of Herons is also a beating, as Council’s Judgment is our only real out. I win game two by swinging for 18 damage with a Mirran Crusader wielding a Sword of War and Peace. This happens two more times during the event, and is another reason I advocate SoWaP over SoLaS.

I win game three when my opponent has a brain fart. They have 8 mana and top deck a Pernicious Deed, I have a board with about three critters and a Batterskull. Normally, it is correct to sit on Deed and pop it during your opponent’s turn for maximum effect. In this instance, my opponent needed to do it on their turn. I was able to bounce my Batterskull back to my hand and redeploy it, vastly improving my clock. My opponent realized their mistake immediately after passing the turn, but the damage was done.

Round 3: 0-2 vs Burn

I am at three life. I am presenting lethal and have a Thalia in play. I have two Plains and a Rishadan Port as lands. My opponent has one card in hand and controls three Mountains. I know my opponent does not have a creature in hand or a spell they can cast for a single mana (e.g. Fireblast). My opponent’s final card is very likely one of the following: land, Price of Progress, or Sulfuric Vortex. I have two options: 1. Play Port two and double Port my opponent during their upkeep. 2. Play another Plains and commit another relevant card to the board (notes don’t say what), and Port my opponent a single time. Playing a Port leaves me dead if my opponent’s final card is Price of Progress. Not playing a second Port will leave me dead to any 2 mana source of damage (e.g. Flame Rift) if my opponent does indeed currently have a land in hand. I am dead to a one mana direct damage spell no matter what if my opponent’s card is a land. Sulfuric Vortex is irrelevant currently since I am at three life. What’s the play?

Based on my opponent’s banter while sideboarding, I am aware that he keeps Price of Progress in for this matchup. If my opponent has Price, he likely will not have cast is for two damage yet, as it will likely become lethal if he holds out a bit longer. His mana has also been taxed by Thalia, furthering the case that he might indeed have Price. If my opponent is playing Price, he likely currently has four in the deck. I guess that there are likely less than four copies of two mana direct damage spells in his deck, and accordingly, I opt to play a Plains and Port him a single time. His card in hand was a land, but his draw for the turn was Searing Blaze. I lose. Whomp, whomp.

Rounds 7-9: The Mirror Gauntlet

I don’t know that the coverage accurately reflected how much D&T was in the room. When I finished my rounds, I walked over a table or two and stopped at the first D&T match I saw. It was great chatting with all of you. Anyway, to sum up these rounds, my notes on the matches show a trend: the mirror is won by getting a mana advantage or an equipment advantage. An unchecked Vial gives you tremendous tempo. Checking your opponent’s Vial might make your opponent stumble enough where you gain an insurmountable advantage, especially if they don’t have access to two white mana. If you fall behind in the equipment war, your resources go towards not letting your opponent connect with said equipment. You are forced to Recruiter for Revokers or Flickerwisps to buy time. Your opponent is then free to advance their board and tutor for more Stoneforges or other relevant cards. In both of the games I dropped to the mirror, my opponent won the equipment war early, and I was not able to win said resource war.

Round 10 vs Dredge

If your opponent takes no play on turn one, they likely have Firestorm or Nature’s Claim in hand. Don’t feel like you need to run out a Mom or Rest in Peace into one of those immediately. Not ramming my RiP into Nature’s Claim seals the deal for me in game three of this round.

If you have Surgical Extraction, Bridge from Below is usually going to be your best target. I know there is a temptation to snipe their first dredge card, but that’s usually not going to work out long term. You can beat Ichorid, Prized Amalgam, and Narcomeba beatdown easily; however, beating a bunch of zombie tokens that also provide fuel for Cabal Therapy and Dread Return is much trickier. I (effectively) win games two and three of this matchup by extracting Bridge, making it very difficult for my opponent to push damage.

Round 13 vs Miracles

Gideon, Ally of Zendikar is generally a token machine vs Miracles. You typically don’t want to plus Gideon, as it’s extremely bad for it to eat a Plow. Luckily for me, my Miracles opponent taps out while I have Gideon in play. I plus Gideon and swing with him and the token, quickly bringing my opponent from ten to three. I think my opponent was so used to Gideon just creating tokens every turn that he didn’t imagine it would do anything else. Whoops, there go a few turns off the clock!

Round 15 ID vs Miracles

So, at the end of round 14, I am sitting at a relatively strong 11-3. I’m ready to play one more round of Magic for a shot at great prizes. The problem, however, is that I have the literal worst tiebreakers of the 33 pointers. I am in 60th place, and 33 pointers go up to 21st place (thanks, round one loss!). This means that it unlikely that I will make it to the next prize tier even with a win. I didn’t get to see the standings (they weren’t easily accessible online), so my opponent informed me of our situation and I accepted his offer for an intentional draw after he takes a minute or two to walk me through the math. I wasn’t super comfortable with it at first, as I didn’t see the standings myself, but he was 100% correct that it was better for us to draw. We guaranteed $500 of prizes between the two of us instead of $250 with an outside shot at $500 for one of us. Retroactively, I can say that I would have ended up in about 36th place if I had played out the round.

The Wrap Up

I ended up going 11-3-1 and got 48th place at this GP, my best GP finish to date. If I add in the event I played Thursday night, that’s a total record of 14-4-1 for the weekend. Given that this GP had 1600+ people, that’s a pretty great feeling. I’ve cashed more IQs than I can count, a couple of Opens, and a few larger events like the Eternal Extravaganza events, but I hadn’t done anything notable with GPs other than make day 2 and whiff on my win-and-cash rounds. Looking back at my performance in this event, I can really see how much I’ve grown in the last year or two. As a Legacy specialist, I don’t have very many chances in a year to really prove myself; every event really mattered to me. There was a period of time where I really felt entitled to wins given how much work I put into the format and how much more experience I had than my average opponent. I was nervous when I got paired against a pro. I had periods of relative depression and insecurity where I waffled on my deck choice or questioned my own ability. That’s all gone now.

I lost round one of the event that mattered most to me this year. I didn’t flinch. I wasn’t mad. I kept playing and fought my way through the ranks until I was back at the top tables. I didn’t get nervous in my win-and-in match for day two. I went undefeated on day two, and that fact didn’t go to my head. More importantly, I successfully played the event one round at a time without taking my losses hard or focusing too much on how many more wins were necessary to cash. I didn’t flinch when paired against the pros, and honestly, this time around, it was the other people who were nervous when sitting down against me. It might have been the cloak though, not gonna lie…

Hotel lobby fun w

I’d like to give some credit to the people who helped make my event great. Louis Fata and Zach Koch were my primary sounding boards for my 75 immediately before the event, though the regulars at MtG:Salvation and The Source gave me some tips as well. You can only do so much theory crafting and testing on your own; sometimes you just need someone else to affirm your crazy ideas or keep you in check. I’d like to thanks my local testing group group for all the work that went into the preparation for this event as well as driving my lazy butt around all weekend. I’d like to thank Lincoln Baxter for his company over the course of day two (my team decided to go to a distillery since they all scrubbed out) and also congratulate him on his first GP day two with his sweet BUG Lands brew that he’s been polishing and writing about for quite some time.

Finally, I’d just like to thank all the random D&T players that took the time to chat with me. It’s no exaggeration to say that it was the best part of my weekend. It was very validating to have people come up to me and tell me that they started to play this deck because of me or won their matches due to sideboarding advice I gave them. I’d like to thank you all for your donations, amazing stories, and for the great article ideas you gave me. Speaking of, expect that article on how I chose my list for the GP and where I’m going moving forward to drop sometime on Friday.

Exploring Alternative Decklists

Today’s article isn’t particularly an article with an ending. Rather, it is a series of beginnings. I’ve been exploring a bunch of alternatives to traditional D&T, most of which have fallen under the umbrella category of the Hateful 8 or various mono-white prison strategies. I’ve played a handful of games with each of the variants below, so I just want to walk you through what I’ve been testing since my last article. Testing new ideas, well, can be frustrating to say the least. It’s rare that your brew is actually legitimately groundbreaking in any way. It’s much more common that you create a deck that could wreck a specific metagame, but has gaping weaknesses of some nature. Here’s a look at about three week’s worth of failures:

Sean Brown's Brew

Creature: (26) (28)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Magus of the Moon
Simian Spirit Guide
Sanctum Prelate
Scab-Clan Berserker
Palace Jailer
Pia and Kiran Nalaar

Non-Creature Spells: (10) (10)
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Dismember
Umezawa’s Jitte
Lands: (22) (22)
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Karakas
Flooded Strand
Plateau
Plains

Sideboard: (15) (15)
Rest in Peace
Containment Priest
Stoneforge Mystic
Mindbreak Trap
Sudden Demise
Disenchant
Ajani Vengeant
Batterskull

This was my first starting point after my last article. I got this list from Sean Brown, who has been walking a very similar path to my own over the past few months. I didn’t like his inclusion of the double red cards, but the additional of extra mana acceleration and Magus of the Moon were both promising. That brought me to try the next list:

Hateful 8 v4

Lands (23)
Plains
Plateau
Flooded Strand
Wasteland
Ghost Quarter
Karakas

Creatures (25)
Palace Jailer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Magus of the Moon
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor

Spells (12)
Swords to Plowshares
Chrome Mox
Sword of Feast and Famine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Crucible of Worlds
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Surgical Extraction
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Stoneforge Mystic
Umezawa’s Jitte

I was interested to see how well an extremely light splash would go, and the answer was, in fact, quite well. Magus gave the deck a very strong tutor target against the three color midrange decks of the format, Eldrazi, and Lands. The Magus was a bit of a nonbo with Ghost Quarter and Path to Exile though. The mana denial portion of this deck was pushed pretty hard, resulting in it being extremely strong when on the play or with Chrome Mox in the opener. Hands without Chrome Mox and being on the draw made the deck loose some oomph though. Keeping that I mind, I tried the following:

Hateful 8 v5

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Ghost Quarter
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Palace Jailer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor
Spirit of the Labyrinth

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
Chrome Mox
Sword of Feast and Faminine
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Surgical Extraction
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Crucible of Worlds

I thought that putting a few Spirits in the deck might smooth and the draws a bit, giving me another viable two drop that still contributed to the prison plan. This version didn’t feel quite right, so I explored things with another two drop…

Hateful 8 v6

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Ghost Quarter
Karakas

Creatures (24)
Palace Jailer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Leonin Arbiter
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Aven Mindcensor
Spirit of the Labyrinth

Spells (13)
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Chrome Mox
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Crucible of Worlds
Sideboard (16)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Stoneforge Mystic
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Sword of War and Peace
Batterskull

This deck denied mana extremely efficiently, but it absolutely could not deal with opposing threats. A Goyf that slipped through gave this deck fits. It also suffered from the problem of being significantly better on the play than on the draw. I wondered it I should try another approach on acceleration, resulting in this terrible deck.

Hateful 8 Maverick Hybrid v7

Creatures (28)
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Birds of Paradise
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Sanctum Prelate
Stoneforge Mystic
Knight of the Reliquary
Noble Hierarch
Aven Mindcensor
Tireless Tracker

Spells (9)
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sylvan Library
Swords to Plowshares
Life from the Loam
Lands (23)
Horizon Canopy
Windswept Heath
Ghost Quarter
Forest
Plains
Gaea’s Cradle
Wasteland
Karakas
Savannah
Verdant Catacombs
Marsh Flats

Sideboard (14)
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Qasali Pridemage
Garruk Relentless
Ethersworn Canonist
Gaddock Teeg
Choke
Surgical Extraction
Reclamation Sage

I figured it would be wonderful to consistently accelerate out cards like Sanctum Prelate and Aven Mindecensor, and I wasn’t wrong. However, I sacrificed the toolbox option of Green Sun’s Zenith, which was perhaps one of the best reasons to play Maverick in the first place. Some of this deck’s draws felt unbeatable, while others really fell flat. I abandoned that one pretty quickly.

Hateful 8 v7

Lands (23)
Plains
Plateau
Flooded Strand
Wasteland
Cavern of Souls
Karakas

Creatures (27)
Palace Jailer
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Stoneforge Mystic
Angel of Invention
Sanctum Prelate
Recruiter of the Guard
Magus of the Moon
Simian Spirit Guide

Spells (10)
Swords to Plowshares
Chrome Mox
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Stoneforge Mystic
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Batterskull
Sword of War and Peace

I then returned to a list closer to first iteration. I cut the double red cards of Shawn’s build that I wasn’t fond of previously, and tried out a few new things. Angel of Invention was a nod to the fact that I really needed a tutorable finisher to balance out all of the prison pieces. It underperformed, unfortunately. It traded with a flipped Delver or a Baleful Strix, which was really disappointing. As an anthem effect, it was quite good; pumping a board of prison pieces and swinging for a surprise lethal attack stole me a few games. It did some silly things with Flickerwisp, but it rarely actually ran away with the game like I imagined it might.

Jailer Control

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Cavern of Souls
Karakas

Creatures (24)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Palace Jailer
Flickerwisp
Eldrazi Displacer
Gisela, the Broken Blade or Restoration Angel

Spells (14)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Sword of Fire and Ice
Path to Exile
Sideboard (15)
Surgical Extraction
Sanctum Prelate
Spirit of the Labyrinth
Ethersworn Canonist
Sword of War and Peace
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

Throughout this testing process, I realized that I *really* liked Palace Jailer. It was taking over games and providing a one-sided Howling Mine in many matchups. My opponents were regularly misplaying against it, assuming it was like Banisher Priest, and it turned every Recruiter into a potential cantripping removal spell. I tried pushing that idea a little further; I wanted to make a Place Jailer deck rather than a deck with Palace Jailer in it, and this list was the result.

Repeatedly blinking Palace Jailer is pretty much unbeatable for the fair decks of the format. To make it to that point, the deck placed a full playset of Path to Exile in addition to the normal removal. Palace Jailer allowed the deck to refuel after using removal early on. The deck struggled a little bit with Shardless, as Baleful Strix and Shardless Agent kept the threats flowing and could overwhelm my removal. I abandoned this idea, but I could see Palace Jailer finding a home in a similar shell. It might fit better as a central card in some sort of Angel Stompy deck with a Moat to hide behind.

Alrighty, that’s all I’ve got for today. I’m currently working on learning the MTGO client so that I can start producing D&T content. So excuse me while I go and jam some drafts while I learn how to hold priority and all that jazz…

Return of the Hateful 8

Most attempts at brewing are failures. Failure isn’t necessarily bad though; if we learn from our mistakes and walk away with some nugget of knowledge, the experience of failure can actually be very positive. I took a chance at a Legacy Classic awhile back and played the following:

Hateful 8

Creatures (25)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Phyrexian Revoker
Eldrazi Displacer
Thought-knot Seer
Reality Smasher
Flametongue Kavu

Spells (10)
Chalice of the Void
Umezawa’s Jitte
Lotus Petal
Lands (25)
Cavern of Souls
Ancient Tomb
Eldrazi Temple
Battlefield Forge
Plateau
Wasteland
Karakas

Sideboard (15)
Sanctum Prelate
Flametongue Kavu
Swords to Plowshares
Rest in Peace
Wear/Tear

The event didn’t go particularly well for me, but I learned a few things. THC was absolutely busted if deployed ahead of curve, and the 2-for-1 nature of Flametongue Kavu was very strong. Unfortunately, the manabase of the deck was a little rough; I had a bit too much trouble casting my red cards, getting double white was tricky, and there was a bit of tension in the deck with Chalice of the Void and some of the sideboard cards. I archived those thoughts, and last week, I had an idea after I watched Daryl Ayers murder everyone with Lands.

Lands

Maindeck (60)
Molten Vortex
Thespian’s Stage
Punishing Fire
Grove of the Burnwillows
Horizon Canopy
Dark Depths
Ghost Quarter
Life from the Loam
Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Wooded Foothills
Windswept Heath
Forest
Seismic Assault
Crop Rotation
Exploration
Gamble
Manabond
Mox Diamond
Wasteland
Glacial Chasm
Maze of Ith
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
Taiga
Sideboard (15)
Tireless Tracker
Molten Vortex
Bojuka Bog
Krosan Grip
Ancient Grudge
Chalice of the Void

Daryl opted to run Ghost Quarter over the more traditional Rishadan Port, which was an amazing metagame call. Many of the top decks run no basic lands, making them Wastelands 5-8. If you have the ability to recur Ghost Quarter, you can quickly run decks like Miracles out of basic lands as well. After watching him play a few games on camera, I was sold on his strategy. I registered RG Lands for the second round of a local Legacy league, and started brewing a new deck.

I was curious what would happen if I revisited a similar style of deck, but sticking closer to the D&T side of things. I decided that I would go for a stronger, more aggressive mana denial plan. To my horror, I realized that I had left three Stoneforges, a Batterskull, and my Jitte at home in the sideboard of my Tin Fins deck. I cursed myself and quickly made a few substitutions. I ran this for a little three round event:

Hateful 8 v1

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Ghost Quarter
Karakas

Creatures (25)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Serra Avenger
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor
Mirran Crusader

Spells (12)
Swords to Plowshares
Chrome Mox
Sword of War and Peace
Sword of Fire and Ice
Crucible of Worlds
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Surgical Extraction
Banisher Priest
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

I was well prepared to just 0-3 for forgetting such critical cards on my desk. To my surprise, I easily 3-0’d the event. I got out of the gates more quickly in the pseudo-mirror, and deploying SoWaP a turn early was devastating. Against UWR Stoneblade, I think I played about 8 turns total; I ran turn one Thalia into turn two THC in game one, and ran Thalia into Crucible and Ghost Quarter lock in game two. I deployed hate ahead of schedule against Dredge, and a turn two THC kept me from getting the beatdown from an army of Ichorids.

Whereas D&T is willing to drag the game out longer, giving Vial a chance to get online and offer a ton of free spells, this deck attempted to throw out a piece of hate or two and push the initial advantage. The threats and lock pieces kept streaming forth, and less time was spent investing in Stoneforge and on Port activations that didn’t have a permanent effect on the game. Keeping that in mind, I explored a little bit and started testing this:

Hateful 8 v2

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Cavern of Souls
Karakas

Creatures (31)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Flickerwisp
Aven Mindcensor
Mirran Crusader
Banisher Priest
Palace Jailer

Spells (6)
Chrome Mox
Sword of Light and Shadow
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Stoneforge Mystic
Batterskull
Umezawa’s Jitte
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

This deck took a slightly different direction than the last one. It’s a little more all-in on the initial hate pieces, opting to max out on both Thalias as well as Sanctum Prelate. Given that Prelate is usually going to get thrown on one, I dropped all the Swords to Plowshares for creature-based removal. Once the deck was almost entirely human, I decided to drop the Crucible and Ghost Quarter package for a playset of Cavern of Souls. The deck perhaps needs another piece of acceleration or two, but it was conceptually quite good. My opponents just couldn’t keep all the dudes off the board, and the creature based removal was usually sticking, as my opponents just couldn’t afford to use removal on them or had already exhausted their removal by the time they hit the field.

So what’s the next logical step? Is a singleton Eldrazi Displacer reasonable alongside the Recruiters and Palace Jailers? Are the other Eldrazi cards worth exploring here? I could go more all-in on initial hate pieces, opting to run Chalice of the Void alongside Sanctum Prelate to make combo decks cry. I could step up the mana denial, returning to the Crucible plan or taking the idea of Suppression Field from the soldier stompy decks. The deck could pick up an Ancient Tomb to go a little faster, or maybe Lotus Petal or Simian Spirit Guide. You know, if I started throwing in Spirit Guides, it might not be unreasonable to throw in a Magus of the Moon… Basically, there’s room for exploration in this archetype.

I’m still in the initial testing phases, and I don’t have a solid conception of how it fares against the metagame as a whole, but I am intrigued. I’ve got about two months to test this idea and similar things before GP Louisville, so I’m not in a rush to find answers. Feel free to get in contact with me if you’ve been trying similar things or if you have some success with any of the builds.

The 60-Card Max Rule

Today’s article is a guest article by my friend Michael Lee, or as many of you might know him, Curby on MtG:Salvation or kirbysdl on The Source. The content is his, but I’ve done a little editing here and there for clarity. The math that follows is based on primarily on hypergeometric distribution .

The 60-Card Max Rule

It’s said that beginners don’t know the rules, skilled practitioners follow the rules, and true masters know when to break the rules. Let’s look at the “60-Card Max” rule we all follow:

Always build 60-card decks.1

Everyone

Now consider not the rule itself, but the purpose behind it. Magic limits the effectiveness of powerful cards through the one-two combo of capping cards at 4 maximum copies and requiring at least 60 total cards. The purpose of “60-Max” is to maximize the chances of getting your most powerful cards. It’s a noble goal but not the only goal. If we consider all aspects of deck-building, we get something less quotable but much more useful:

Build decks to balance the chances of drawing the cards in the deck. Prioritize the chances of drawing your staple playsets, but don’t neglect the chances of drawing powerful 3-ofs and pairs. The goal is not to achieve any one number, but rather to build in a nuanced manner to achieve a cohesive whole.

No One Ever

So people cite “60-Max” because adding cards beyond 60 decreases the chances of seeing your playsets. Sure, but by how much? Don’t worry, I brought some math to this fight.

Adding a Creature

Let’s say a given Death and Taxes deck has room for a single Thalia, Heretic Cathar (THC). Based on metagaming considerations, the pilot would like to add a second THC. The right answer is often to replace a less relevant card with the new choice, but what if the player simply adds a THC to their 60-card deck?

60 cards

  • Chance to open on at least 1 of 4 Aether Vials: 39.9%2
  • Chance to draw at least 1 of 3 Flickerwisps by turn three: 39.1%
  • Chance to draw at least 1 of 2 Serra Avengers by turn three: 28.0%
  • Chance to draw the single THC by turn three: 15.0%

61 cards

  • Chance to open on at least 1 of 4 Vials: 39.4%
  • Chance to draw at least 1 of 3 ‘wisps by turn three: 38.6%
  • Chance to draw at least 1 of 2 Avengers by turn three: 27.5%
  • Chance to draw at least 1 of 2 THCs by turn three: 27.5%

Having added that second THC, the pilot should expect to miss seeing Vial from just one more opening hand among hundreds of games. In other words, two players could take these similar decks through every round in several 2-day Legacy GPs and easily never see any difference in Vials. Similarly, the chances of drawing any triples and pairs does go down, but the difference is again merely a rounding error (≈0.5%). However, the goal of drawing THC more often is fully met: the chance of naturally drawing it by turn three nearly doubles.

Adding a Land

Recent printings of powerful 3-drops such as THC, Sanctum Prelate, and Recruiter of the Guard have increased the average mana costs of many D&T builds, requiring pilots to hit their first few land drops more consistently. Some of us have proposed adding an extra land to relieve the pressure. Let’s suppose our 60-card deck starts with a standard 23 land manabase including 10 Plains and 3 Karakas. If we add another Plains, the probabilities for spells follow the example above but what happens to the manabase?

The original deck had a 83.7% chance to open on one or more Plains or Karakas; the modified deck enjoys 85.6%. This is important to allow a first-turn Swords to Plowshares, for example. Another worry is being stuck with 3-drops and no way to cast them. The chances of opening on three or more uncastable 3-drops goes from 10.3% to 9.7% when we add a land (for details, see my chance-to-draw spreadsheet).

What about downsides? The original deck has a 24.6% chance of flooding with four or more land in the opener, but the modified deck sees 26.6%. It’s clear that modifying the manabase is a complex issue, and the effects are wide-ranging. However not everything changes: the relative chances of seeing our different spells remain the same. Adding a land allows us to get more mana without changing the ratios of our spells.

Other Examples

This analysis is not limited to Death and Taxes. Imagine a deck of any archetype where you’ve locked 57 maindeck cards, and are debating between two cards for the last slots. You could awkwardly fit a “2-1” combination, but what if they’re important in different, equally-common matchups? In this situation, I’d consider adding two of each. Doing so roughly doubles your chance of drawing the card you would otherwise only have one of, and only slightly reduces your chances of seeing your more numerous cards.

Alternately, imagine a deck with a small tutor component to find silver bullets against particular matchups. You’ve tightened the maindeck down, but you’re heading into a metagame with a common matchup where an additional tutor target would help. Instead of removing an existing staple and heavily reducing the chance of seeing it, it may make sense to add the new target as a 61st card. Doing so gives you game-1 access to the new card while only slightly affecting the card you might have otherwise cut.

Trade-offs

I feel so strongly about considering trade-offs that I put it right in my forum signature. You aren’t really forced to judge the relative power of cards until you start considering what to cut. However, cutting a card is not the only possible outcome. Instead of cutting one card and reducing the chance of seeing it by a lot, you can reduce the chances of seeing every other card by a tiny bit. It amazes me that one of those trade-offs is so commonly accepted, and the other so thoroughly vilified.

The Road to Mastery

The goal here isn’t to advocate 61+ cards in every deck, but rather to honestly consider when it might be an appropriate solution. If there’s a combo deck that completely centers around getting two different cards, any reduction in finding those cards is a prohibitive cost compared to cutting a less important utility card.

However, other decks are more well-rounded. Aggro decks field redundant threats. Control decks have a variety of overlapping control elements. While some cards in those decks are still more important than others, the deck can probably function perfectly well without drawing them in a given game. In those decks, slightly reducing the chances of seeing all cards may be a viable alternative to heavily reducing the chance of seeing one card.

Where Does it End?

A common counter-argument to someone considering a 61st card is, “Why stop at 61? Why not add a 62nd card? Why not add ten cards?” Well, it’s actually not a counter-argument but rather something to consider. Could 62 or more cards ever be ideal?

The more cards you add, the more you dilute the most powerful cards in the deck. We saw above that a 61st card drops the “Vial in opener” chance by ≈0.5%. The next several additional cards each reduce it further by ≈0.5%, so the cumulative effects will be increasingly obvious as you add cards. Furthermore the number of potential cuts goes up too, so additional candidates have to be exceptionally powerful to all justify inclusion. Eventually, you simply run out of cards whose power levels equally justify destabilizing the rest of the deck.

Having done that analysis, the answer to, “Why not 62?” is either that you can make the case for a given 62nd card, or that you can find a card to cut rather than further weakening the deck. In short, the answer depends on the situation.

Mastering “60-Max”

You can sometimes actually increase the consistency and effectiveness of a deck by adding a 61st card. You may not agree with all of my examples above, but the overall point still stands: “60-Max” is a useful guideline, not an unbreakable requirement.

A zero-tolerance viewpoint is usually the lazy way out: it is so much easier to simply decree that every 61-card deck is fundamentally broken than to examine whether or not that is actually true. Indeed, the nuances of any complex issue cannot be fully understood without considering when the rules should be broken.

Given that we’re here at Thraben University, I’ll end with a professor’s words:

Pedantry and mastery are opposite attitudes toward rules. To apply a rule to the letter, rigidly, unquestioningly, in cases where it fits and in cases where it does not fit, is pedantry […] To apply a rule […] without ever letting the words of the rule obscure the purpose of the action or the opportunities of the situation, is mastery.

George Pólya


  1. This article focuses on the 60-card minimum deck size found in most constructed formats; other formats define different allowable deck sizes. 

  2. All probabilities are taken from my chance-to-draw spreadsheet. See the “60-Max” tab there for specifics. 

An Hour of Aether Vial!

Early this week I spent about an hour chatting about the intricacies of Aether Vial with Zachary Koch, host of the Legacy’s Allure podcast. The episode isn’t about D&T, per say, but it does have a ton of useful information about Aether Vial tricks and bluffs that newer pilots will find useful.

You can find the webcast version with video here and the audio only version here
.

EE5 and Deckbuilding Decisions

EE5 wasn’t a great event for me. I hit a rough string of matches in the early rounds of the event (Mono Blue Omniscience, Lands, Lands, Infect), and I opted to drop from the event at 3-3 rather than try to 3-0 the remaining rounds to min cash. We had about a five hour drive home, and 3/5 of the people in our car were dead for prize support while the remaining two were at X-3.

It was, however, a great weekend for my playground. My roommate top 8’d the Vintage event and one of the other Roanoke locals got second in the Legacy event. I’d also like to call attention to Louis Fata (AntiquatedNotion on MtGS), a good friend of mine who top 8’d the Legacy event with D&T. Louis and I meet up at just about every major event on the east coast, and I highly respect him as a pilot. Let’s compare his list to my own version:

EE5 D&T Phil Gallagher 10/17/16

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Serra Avenger
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist
Sword of War and Peace
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Banisher Priest
Pithing Needle
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar

EE5 D&T Louis Fata 10/17/16

Lands (23)
11 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Critters (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Serra Avenger
Phyrexian Revoker
Sanctum Prelate
Recruiter of the Guard
Thalia, Heretic Cathar

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Gideon Ally of Zendikar
Containment Priest
Council’s Judgment
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Pithing Needle
Sanctum Prelate
Mirran Crusader

You can read his tournament report here. Of note, he admits that he just isn’t sure of the correct build of D&T at the current time, which has been a very hot topic in the forums lately.

The D&T community lately has been split in half in regards to deckbuilding, and THC is the most problematic card. There are three primary opinions on the card: 1. It is garbage and doesn’t belong in the deck. 2. It is extremely synergistic with the rest of the shell and should be a three-of. 3. The card is fine, but the deck needs room for Sanctum Prelate and Recruiter of the Guard, making it a reasonable two-of.

I’m currently off THC, but that doesn’t mean it is necessarily bad. I’m relatively neutral on the card. THC has an extremely high ceiling and low floor as a card. When your opponent is stumbling, THC often wins the game on the spot by offering several timewalks. Against a Delver deck, curving Thalia into THC is basically insurmountable. In a couple of specific matchups (e.g. Elves, Eldrazi), the card is noticeably better than our other options. When you are on the draw against an average deck, THC does feel a little slow and its impact is often minimal (though its body and legendary status are still nothing to sneeze at). I tried to stay on the fence for a long time by playing one as a tutor target, but it just isn’t great when coming down on turn 4 off a vial or turn four after tutoring on turn three. If you play THC, commit to it and play 2-3 to maximize its impact. I’m also wary of some of the builds I’ve been seeing that skip on staples like Revoker or Stonforge to try to fit in multiple THC in addition to the new goodies.

I really want to have a good number of Recruiters for the utter madness of Flickerwisp chains, which have been winning me tons of games. It almost doesn’t matter what matchup it is; your opponents can just very quickly drown in 3/1 elementals provided you just aren’t dead by turn 4. Many users on The Source and on MtGS have been advocating two, but I’m really liking the full three; the deck plays out very smoothly after turn three. I also literally have no idea why people are trimming down to three Flickerwisp; that card has always been insane, and now we gave it a bunch of candy and set it loose on the world. I also want to have two Prelates in the 75, as in the matchups where it matters, a second Prelate is often a literal zero-outer situation.

I have moved away from bullets in the main. Banisher Priest got bumped to the sideboard after I realized that I was usually just getting Flickerwisp or Prelate off Recruiter anyway. I still 100% want Banisher Priest in the 75 though, and I prefer it to Mangara of Corondor for tempo reasons. Serra Avenger also needs to be in the deck. I really wanted to cut it to maximize the human/Cavern of Souls synergy and reduce the WW requirements of the deck, but I’ve just been pleasantly surprised by it at just about every turn. I went back up to two copies, and then ticked up again to a third copy.

The newer versions of D&T are playing a bit of a slower game than previous iterations of the deck. Prelate promotes a more prison-based playstyle, and Recruiter offers selection at the cost of speed. Even though many of the decks are still running the same number of three drops as before, there is a very big difference between Crusader/Brimaz (aggressive finishers) and Prelate/Recruiter. I do sometimes worry that the deck in its current iteration might be a touch too slow, and I’ve been thinking about what can be done to alleviate that problem.

Obviously, playing another 1 or 2 drop creature would be ideal, but the pickings are slim. Judge’s Familiar and Weathered Wayfarer are about the only reasonable one drop creatures. Ethersworn Canonist and Spirit of the Labyrinth are reasonable two drops, but neither feels great. That brings us to non-creature spells. I wonder if it might be correct to play one more removal spell in the main. When I was talking to Iatee (a prominent D&T player on The Source) at EE5, he remarked that he was trying a version of the deck with four Path to Exile in the sideboard; he ended up boarding in all four very frequently (7 of his 9 matches). That does make me wonder if a Path or maybe another removal spell like Blessed Alliance or Sunlance might be acceptable in the main. Blessed Alliance would be a removal spells you could play while also having a Sanctum Prelate on one, whereas Sunlance would be good against mana dorks like Deathrite Shaman.

Alternatively, other cards which help enable our long game might be just fine. Land Tax, for example, could keep us hitting the vital land drops our deck needs to function. Knight of the White Orchid could offer a similar effect, but its power level would swing drastically on the play vs the draw. I don’t particularly think either of those options is good, but that’s the sort of thinking I want to be open to in the coming weeks.

Interview with Arnaud Aubert

Arnaud Aubert recently got 3rd at BoM Paris with D&T. He was one of the first to post successful results with D&T in the post-Conspiracy 2 world. He reached out to me to offer his advice and give a run down of how the event went. The following are his responses to my various questions. They appear with some minor editing for clarity and formatting, but without any of my thoughts interjected. For reference, here is his list:

BoM D&T, 3rd Place

Lands (23)
Cavern of Souls
Mishra’s Factory
Karakas
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
10 Plains

Creatures (26)
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Mother of Runes
Phyrexian Revoker
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Spells (11)
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Æther Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Sideboard (15)
Council’s Judgment
Sword of War and Peace
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Path to Exile
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist

Tell me a little bit about yourself and your Magic career. About how long have you been playing Magic competitively and how long have you been on D&T?

I’m 43 years old and I live in a small village about 45 miles from Paris. I’ve been playing Magic since 1994, with the exception of a six-year hiatus, and as long as I remember I’ve always enjoyed playing in tournaments. At first I attended large events, but as life went on (children, family life), I switched to smaller events like FNMs. From time to time, my friends and I still go to Legacy GPs or bigger tournaments. I won some small tournaments and I had a day 2 at GP Ghent (I was on Belcher) and GP Lille 2016 (I was on Infect). I have been on D&T for three and a half years, though I played Maverick before that as well. I also played Lands for a year and a half, but decided to switch back to D&T after a horrendous GP Prague.

What sort of preparation did you do for the BoM? Did you have a team that helped you test?

I didn’t have any preparation for the BOM except for a side-event at GP Lille with the usual D&T decklist. I have no team to playtest, however, I have a good friend of mine Franck Filatriau, who is also on D&T, and we do share our thoughts on the deck. He was also on D&T at BOM; after an impressive 4-0, he fell at 4-3 and dropped. His decklist included 2 Recruiter of the Guard in the main, 1 Sanctum Prelate in the sideboard, as well as 1 Mangara of Corondor. During the day before the BoM, I didn’t feel at ease with my deck. I did not playtest and thought that Recruiters and Prelates would be too slow, but I was still eager to play with it.

How did you come to your decisions about card choices and numbers? Many D&T players (myself included) have really been struggling with the number of Serra Avenger, Sanctum Prelate, Mirran Crusader and Thalia, Heretic Cathar.

I know you’re still struggling with Serra Avengers and Mirran Crusaders, but I would advocate for Serra Avengers most of the time; flying and vigilance do matter when you are facing a board with Tarmogoyfs and the like. As for me, 2 is the right number; you have so many great cards in this deck that you can win without any punchers. Serra Avengers are a necessary evil; they do survive Massacre, Dread of Night, Engineered Plague,and have some board presence when they hit the field.

Mirran Crusader is a great puncher for sure, but if you’re facing a board with some number of creatures, it won’t help you that much. At least, you can be pretty sure your opponent will not attack until he finds a way to circumvent your Crusader. I do think that Mirran is less useful than Avenger with the new decklist; most of the time, Recruiter will fetch cards to establish control (Banisher Priest, Prelate, Flickerwisp, Thalia 1&2). So Avenger’s flying & vigilance abilities seem to be better for dealing with the remaining threats.

I was on 2 Prelates. It’s a great card to shut off these pesky spells. One is definitely not enough and three or more can be counterproductive. Also, it’s not a great card when you face the mirror or Eldrazi. I won twice with 2 Prelates on the board and I don’t think I would have won with only one (Punishing Loam and Miracles).

THC was a beast every time she landed. She won me 3 matches. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to play more than one. I think that 2 may be the right number.

Last but not least: the Recruiters. I know that many people tend to think that Recruiter is a tad too slow. In my opinion, Recruiter is the card our deck has been waiting for. He allowed me to win through a chain of Flickerwisps, he fetched back my Terminus’d Prelate twice, and he allowed me to get the Banisher Priest to exile a dreaded Tombstalker when I was at 2 life. When I looked back at BOM Paris, I realized that the Recruiter has been more of a factor in winning games than the Prelate. He brings you card selection, fetching the needed card at the right moment. I went from one to three and never felt it was too much, though 4 would be too much (we need space for other cards ;). As for people saying he’s too slow, well for sure he’s too slow in some matchups (Burn, for example,) but no cards could save you from a turn one kill, a turn one Griselbrand drawing a bunch of cards, or a turn four kill full of burn spells.

What did you play against during the event? How did those matches go, and were there any particularly cool/difficult/noteworthy interactions or scenarios that came up?

In order, I played:
– Punishing Loam (2-0). Recruiter and Prelate for the win.
– Burn (0-2). Prelate was burnt to death.
– Painter (2-0). Recruiter and Prelate for the win.
– Team America (1-1). Recruiter and Prelate prevailed in game 1, but I drew poorly in game two and we drew.
– Junk (2-1). Recruiter prevailed in each game, summoning an army of Flickerwips,
– UB Reanimator (2-1). Containment Priest was a beast.
– Junk Red Splash (2-0) Recruiter, Prelate, and THC prevailing in G1. Recruiter fetched creatures who survived 2 Engineered Plague naming Human.
– Shardless BUG (2-0). Recruiter & THC prevailed in both games.
– Lands (2-0). There was no prevailing card, only pressure.
– Top 8: Miracles (2-1). Recruiter & Prelate prevailed in game one, I fell short of creatures in game two, and THC prevailed in game three.
-Top 4: B/R Reanimator (0-2). Game one, Turn one Griselbrand. Game two, I couldn’t exile the Tidespout Tyrant with Council’s Judgment, as I was missing one white mana (Damn Cavern of Souls!).

The deck was a blast to play, and it never felt it was too slow compared to previous decklists. Recruiter/Flickerwisp/Vial allowed me some tricks I would have never dreamed of with the old decklist. I met the Team America player at the end of the tournament, and he told me he crushed the 2 other D&T he faced. He said that the new version of D&T was far more resilient than he originally thought.

If you were to play in another large event sometime soon, would you change any of the cards in your 75? Why or why not?

As I said before (Editor’s note: in a previous email not included here), I will attend the European Eternal Weekend in Paris (22nd of October). I would change 2 cards in my 75. I’d bring another THC in place of a Flickerwisp in the main; 4 Flickerwisps are a bit too much as we have Recruiters. I’d also bring a Faerie Macabre or Relic of Progenitus instead of a Rest in Peace in the sideboard to fight more efficiently the Reanimator matchup. Moreover, Faerie Macabre can be fetched through Recruiter.

Do you have any other thoughts about the deck that you want to share or any advice for newer D&T players?

My first goal, when I did play at the BOM, was to prove that D&T was still a force to be reckoned with. D&T is one of the most rewarding decks, but also one of the most difficult to master (there was a lot of players on D&T at BOM Paris but there were only to 3 that reached top 32). Newer D&T players must be ready for not reaching top 8 during the first months or years. 🙂 D&T doesn’t forgive the slightest mistake. Even if one attains true mastery with the deck, one must know by heart each deck he will face one day or another.

Interview with Don Donelson

Sunday night I had a chance to chat with Don Donelson, pilot of the D&T list that took 13th place at the Legacy Classic on 9/18/16. Don is part of the SFM (Southern Florida Magic) scene, which attracts a variety of very strong players. Accordingly, he has had the opportunity to hone his skills in a very strong Legacy scene. While Don doesn’t always play D&T, it is one of his primary decks (along with RUG Delver), and he’s been playing the deck off and on for years. He doesn’t often have the chance to travel outside of his region for events, and he admitted that this was one of the few big events he had the opportunity to travel for in quite some time. Alrighty, now that we know the man, let’s look at his 75.

Don Donelson's D&T

Creatures (26)
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Phyrexian Revoker
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Serra Avenger

Spells (11)
Batterskull
Umezawa’s Jitte
Aether Vial
Sword of Fire and Ice
Swords to Plowshares
Lands (23)
Plains
Rishadan Port
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Karakas
Horizon Canopy

Sideboard (15)
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Containment Priest
Council’s Judgment
Rest in Peace
Path to Exile
Ethersworn Canonist
Pithing Needle

As we discussed his decklist, he remarked that he was a little bit unsure on how the deck was supposed to be built these days. Around three years ago, he believed that the lands were really the flex slots of the deck; your tough decisions were about the number of Flagstones of Trokair or Horizon Canopy to put in your deck. These days, the creatures are proving much more difficult to hammer down than ever before. Until the rise of the Eldrazi decks, running three Moms was largely considered foolish; now it’s becoming acceptable, and potentially even correct. He had mixed feelings about Recruiter of the Guard as well. He started by testing three and gradually went down to only a single copy; he feared that adding Recruiter to the deck along with a few bullets would cause the deck to be a touch too slow. He reluctantly trimmed the 4th Mom to make room for the second Recruiter in his 75.

Notably absent from his 75 is Mirran Crusader. He felt that the number of Bolts running around was higher than the number of Goyfs, and made the metagame call appropriately. He did state that if the metagame shifts a bit, this would be one of the first cards to come back. Like many other lists of late, he opted to run two Serra Avenger. His reasoning for it was quite stellar, and I might actually concede that Avenger should be in the deck, something that I’ve been on the fence about for weeks. Don believes that one of the greatest strengths of D&T is the ability to fluidly switch back and forth between the aggressor and the control role. Without a card like Avenger to help make that transition easier, it can be pretty easy to walk a little too far down the path of hard control. When that happens, you may find your board is stalled with a bunch of bears that just can’t break board parity.

Don did say that confirmation bias was a bit of a problem in testing the recent builds of the deck. For the uninitiated, confirmation bias is a process by which you take results and make them fit in with your current beliefs. That tends to end in players thinking things like, “I’m winning with my build, so the build I’m playing must be correct,” or “This card did XYZ cute interaction that no other card could, so it must be worth a slot.” In particular with Recruiter of the Guard and bullets, it’s really hard to tell what is objectively good for the deck versus what happens to be good in the moment. The deck has so many options these days, and the data is still limited, so building good conclusions can be very difficult. If you go really far down the confirmation bias rabbit hole, the more data you have, the greater your results might be skewed depending on how you interpret the data… I’ll leave you to Google confirmation bias if you’re interested, and I’ll just leave the nerdy tangent and get back to D&T stuff.

Don, like many other pilots, also opted to run two Cavern of Souls in his build. He was very happy with how those performed throughout the day, and he ended up 3-0 vs Miracles across the course of the day. He remarked that an active Mom alongside a Prelate on 6 is a soft lock for the Miracles opponent; though it is possible to break through, things are pretty rough at that point. When coupled with 6 bouncable Thalias that often came down as uncounterable threats, the matchup felt like a breeze. This was Don’s first event without Cataclysm in the sideboard, and while he was initially hesitant with that decision, he did not regret it. He enjoyed Gideon, Ally of Zendikar as a midpoint between Cataclysm and Wilt-Leaf Liege, and it certainly won him at least one of his matches over the course of the day.

Don’s other wins were against Storm and Elves, while his losses were to Affinity and Big Red. Echoing many of my own thoughts, he felt that the Elves matchup has gotten much better than it has been previously. While we are still certainly a dog in game 1, Prelate, THC, Canonist, and Containment Priest together form a pretty good package to fight off the little green men in the post-sideboard games. Prelate is a touch awkward against Elves. While the conceptual best thing to do with it is name 4 to shut off Natural Order, Prelate can come down after the Elves deck already reaches four mana. That means it can often be correct to just name one to shut off Glimpse of Nature.

Don was pretty happy with his 75, though he did say that he wanted to experiment with going down to two Karakas like I have been experimenting with. He believes that many of the matchups where Karakas is “necessary” are already so good that trimming one Karakas probably doesn’t matter that much. Reanimator and Sneak and Show are already great matchups, so it may been worth hedging in different directions to improve other matchups.

This is the first of what I hope will become an interview series. If you do well at a major event, feel free to email me if you have some ideas or stories you want to tell. I’d also like to thank a few readers for donating after last week’s articles; every donation pushes me to do more and more with the site!

Metagaming for Fun and Profit

Today’s article is really more of a view into my metagaming and deckbuilding process than anything else. I tend to have a very good idea of what I want to play for a given tournament, but occasionally at smaller, local-level events, you can do a ton of damage by properly metagaming and adjusting your deck on the fly. I rolled up to SCG HQ this morning with the intention of playing the following 75:

IQ Draft Decklist

Lands (23)
11 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Mirran Crusader
Phyrexian Revoker
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Sword of War and Peace
Seal of Cleansing
Council’s Judgment
Leonin Relic-Warder
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Pithing Needle

I was a little unsure about what I wanted to play. Serra Avenger is currently the most contentious card that keeps floating in and out of the deck, and I think I’ve played a slightly different list most days since I started playtesting the new cards. Accordingly, I brought about 30 extra cards that I could slot into the deck and make last minute changes with, if I so desired. Well, as it so happens, there were only twelve people in the store for this particular IQ (there was another competing event in the area and a bunch of our regulars had traveled out of town). That meant that I could really adjust my deck to be perfect for the expected metagame. Here’s what I saw when scouting the room:

Tin Fins
Oops, All Spells
ANT
Burn
Mono-Red Sneak Attack
Bogles
Elves
Deathblade
White Eldrazi
Shardless BUG
RUG Delver

My first thought was: “Someone is playing Bogles!” Once I got past that initial shock, I started tweaking. The manabase is always the easiest part, so I started there. Without any Miracles in the room, it didn’t make sense to run Cavern of Souls, so those got cut for two more Plains to help with the Burn and Mono-Red Sneak Attack matchups.

Next I turned to the creature base, which was a touch trickier. Ethersworn Canonist isn’t a card that I typically advocate for the maindeck, but I wanted it for 7 of the matchups in the room; it wouldn’t be great against Eldrazi, but it was live or actively good everywhere else. Canonist got promoted for the day, freeing up two sideboard slots. Those slots became the Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Banisher Priest from the main. Both were cards that I wanted to have access to, but didn’t feel the need to maindeck.

Next came tinkering with the sideboard. To have an answer to Bogles, I really needed a pair of Council’s Judgment; that card was also actively good in the Eldrazi and Deathblade matchups, so it was an easy include. With Elves, Sneak Attack, and Tin Fins in the room, a second copy of Containment Priest seemed logical as well.

Finally, I came to my final sideboard card. I wanted something that I could tutor up as a lifegain card for the Bogles and Burn matchup while still having utility elsewhere. After going through my box o’ goodies, I dug out Lone Missionary. Against Burn, it would likely effectively be worth about 6 life on average; either because I could trade it for a creature, or because I could blink it with Flickerwisp. Against Bogles, it would likely put me out of the range of a quick Become Immense and Assault Strobe kill.

That left me with the following decklist:

IQ Decklist

Lands (23)
13 Plains
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Mirran Crusader
Phyrexian Revoker
Ethersworn Canonist
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Sword of War and Peace
Council’s Judgment
Leonin Relic-Warder
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Banisher Priest
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Pithing Needle
Lone Missionary

The tournament was really small, only 5 rounds with a cut to top 4. I’ll just give the breakdown as well as a few highlights.

1-2 vs ANT
2-0 vs Bogles
2-0 vs Burn
2-0 vs White Eldrazi
2-0 vs Mono-Red Sneak Attack

My ANT opponent had Daze for my turn two Thalia, something that I really wasn’t expecting, and then proceeded to storm off. I’m not going to say that the tech is good, but it completely caught me off guard. I’ll be more aware of that for the future, but I think it’s likely something that you don’t play around. If they have it, they have it, but not just jamming Thalia is probably wrong.

When I played against Bogles, I did indeed play Lone Missionary to buy myself a turn. It gave me enough time to get a Sanctum Prelate on 6 to shut off Become Immense, effectively locking my opponent out of the game. While Lone Missionary is not an objectively powerful card, it filled the niche role I needed it to for this exact event.

At that point, I was first seed going into the top four. Since the top four included two of my testing partners, we just decided to call it a day and top four split. That was worth something like $62.50 cash, another $50 in credit, and the usual playmat and pin that get thrown in the box o’ playmats and pins. Not bad for three and a half hours of my day… The deck that I built was probably pretty close to perfect for the event. All of my wins were 2-0 wins pretty easily, and my loss to ANT was due to some of my opponent’s own shenanigans, though I felt like the matchup was otherwise extremely positive. The final thing I’ll say is, “Don’t just rip off this decklist and bring it to your own event.” This was specifically made for one day, one event, one specific group of people. I wouldn’t bring this same 75 to an Open-sized event. That being said, you may find that you can do similar things at your own small events to end up with similar results.

Debating Deckbuilding Decisions in D&T

There’s a fine line between genius and madness, and today I’d like to straddle that line and walk down a dangerous road. Pardon my descent into madness, if you will, but I’ve been itching to write about this for a few days now. I considered just not posting about this until after my next event, but lately I’ve been erring on the side of sharing my work and getting feedback rather than hoarding interesting ideas. Recently I’ve been taking nothing as sacred and I’ve been questioning everything. Today’s article is really going to be a hodgepodge of questions that I’ve been asking myself. I’ve found answers to some of these questions, while I’m still searching for the answers to others. I’d love to hear feedback on this article, as I’m not sure if what I’m doing here is too cute or brilliant.

Are the cards from Conspiracy 2 the real deal?
Yes, most certainly. Sanctum Prelate and Recruiter of the Guard should be in your maindeck in some capacity. If you haven’t played with them, I encourage you to test them; it takes a few games to get used to how it impacts your aggression and decision trees, but the cards are innately very powerful. This list from The Bazaar of Moxen in Paris should give you a good feel for a solid, stock list from here on out. It’s very close to what I’ve been testing and what I posted in my previous article and/or what I’ve run in the past.

Aubert Arnaud, BoM Paris, 3rd place.

Lands (23)
Cavern of Souls
Mishra’s Factory
Karakas
Rishadan Port
Wasteland
10 Plains

Creatures (26)
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Sanctum Prelate
Serra Avenger
Mother of Runes
Phyrexian Revoker
Recruiter of the Guard
Stoneforge Mystic
Flickerwisp
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben

Spells (11)
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Umezawa’s Jitte
Æther Vial
Swords to Plowshares
Sideboard (15)
Council’s Judgment
Sword of War and Peace
Rest in Peace
Pithing Needle
Path to Exile
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Containment Priest
Ethersworn Canonist

What do I cut/trim to make room for the new cards?
This is what keeps me up at night. I think the answer is Serra Avenger and Mirran Crusader, but the deck really does need some amount of evasion and ability to push through stalled boards. Cutting both of these cards would significantly decrease the evasive properties of the deck, so that’s a trade off that must be considered. Cutting Serra Avengers also pushes the curve to be a bit higher than it has been in the past, though that is not innately a bad thing. I would really like to see a two drop flier with more than one toughness with relevant abilities (e.g. lifelink) to help bridge the gap, but many of the options like Selfless Spirit or Kor Skyfisher haven’t quite been what I wanted.

How many tutorable bullets do I play? Which bullets are worth playing?
My initial lists started out with all sorts of cute, conditional cards. I keep cutting things like Adaptive Automaton for being too narrow and not having enough impact. I’m not even sure that we need Mangara of Corondor or Leonin Relic-Warder anymore. I’m finding that I can often get by with tutoring up a Flickerwisp or Revoker and have most of the same functionality. I really like Banisher Priest given the popularity of Delver and Eldrazi decks, and I think having at least one Thalia, Heretic Cathar in the main is a good idea. Other than that, I’d keep your bullets to cards that offer functionality that the deck otherwise would not have, extremely versatile cards, or cards that are hateful enough to win a match on their own. Somewhat hateful cards like Fiendslayer Paladin, Hokori, Dust Drinker, or Stonecloaker are fine, but given how difficult it is to find room in the 75, I can’t quite give those sorts of cards my seal of approval.

What other ideas did you have that didn’t pan out or are on your to-test list?
I wanted Selfless Spirit as a card to protect from sweepers, but too many cards like Terminus and Massacre got around it; it also had one toughness, as is the usual problem with everything I love and hold dear in life. Since I’m already trimming a Mom, this probably isn’t the direction I need to go anyway.

Celestial Crusader might be a viable Gideon, Ally of Zendikar replacement. I primarily want Gideon for Miracles and Shardless, and Celestial Crusader seems theoretically to fill the same sort of role while also being tutorable. Celestial Crusader would be good in the matchups in a very different sort of way, but it has a little more oomph than the Adaptive Automaton I had before. Again, this probably doesn’t make the cut, but I might try it when I have a chance. Since the card wasn’t seeing play previously, I’m skeptical that it would be acceptable now that we can just happen to draw it more frequently. Thalia’s Lieutenant was tossed around on the forums a bit, but I think that isn’t going to quite do enough most of the time, and is really awkward once a Dread of Night is already in play. I’d also consider trying a 1/1 split of Gideon and Elsepth, Knight Errant. If we play more bears without evasion, then being able to push damage in the skies with Elspeth becomes a bit more attractive than it has been in the past.

I considered cards like Hangarback Walker and Custodi Soulbinders, but they didn’t really do anything new. I was interested in the fact that I *could* tutor for them, but the deck doesn’t need big idiots, and you only get tokens from Hangerback if it actually dies, a dubious proposition at best. The cards weren’t efficient enough, though I did stumble onto some useful information by thinking about these. More on that in a minute…

Does adding in the new cards necessitate any other changes to the deck?
I suspect so, though I’m in the early stages of supporting my thoughts with data. I think D&T is going to have fewer cards to sideboard out in many matchups. In the past, it was common to just pull out a bunch of Avengers and Crusaders when they weren’t relevant. Now that Recruiters and Prelates have filled the slots, we may need to adjust some sideboard numbers so that there aren’t wasted slots. Again, I don’t have hard numbers here, it’s just a hunch that I’ll be following up on.

I like Cavern of Souls again given the increased density of humans in the deck. I like the idea of Seal of Cleansing as sideboard card over Council’s Judgment. Seal is a proactive, two-drop play that also only requires a single white. Given that we have more three drops and more to be doing with our mana, this might be a good way to shift our removal. I’m not sure if the Eldrazi and True-Name Nemesis matchups are fine without Council’s Judgment, but that’s what testing is for, after all. In the past I also advocated a pair of Pithing Needle, but if we are going to set Prelate to one all the time, that becomes a touch awkward.

This is the part of the article where we start to get weird. Here we go… I also wonder if the deck still needs 3 Karakas. *record scratch* Okay, let me explain, because I know that’s absolute blasphemy. The primary benefit of Karakas in the past has been to protect Thalia, Guardian of Thraben while also having ancillary benefits in various legendary creature-based matchups like Sneak and Show, Tin Fins, Lands, and Reanimator. The new builds of D&T I’ve been playing have been mana hungrier than most other builds I’ve played in the past. As a result, I’ve really dreaded drawing the second copy of Karakas. I also feel like the deck doesn’t care about it’s creatures as much as it used to. Given the presence of Recruiter, most creatures are much more replaceable than in the past. With the exception of your 1-of bullets, it often does not matter if your creature dies; you can Recruiter for a replacement and redeploy the following turn. If you have an active Vial, it can happen even sooner. Alternatively, your opponent can answer your first threat, paving the way for Prelate to stick around. If we are also frequently tapping out to play three drops or multiple spells, we also won’t be holding up Karakas as frequently. As such, it might just be better to play another land of some nature to decrease the chance of Legend-ruling your own land. Math nerds click here

Okay, if you’re with me so far, bear with me for one more crazy thought. When I started thinking about things that were tutorable, my mind eventually turned to cards with zero power that we could tutor up. While Hangarback Walker wasn’t quite right, as I discussed above, what if we throw a Phyrexian Metamorph in the deck? Metamorph serves as additional copies of our own cards while also having an unparalleled degree of flexability. This was something I started doing in Vintage, and if it works there, why not in Legacy?! You can copy an opposing Baleful Strix to build your own removal spell and draw a card. You can copy an opposing Tarmogoyf to invalidate your opponent’s attacks, buying the rest of your deck time to do its thing. Copying an opposing Reality Smasher or Thought-Knot Seer probably does gross things to your opponent. Heaven forbid if your opponent actually has something spicy in play like a Leovold, Emissary of Trest or a Griselbrand… If your opponent actually plays artifacts, you could wind up with your own Sensei’s Diving Top or piece of equipment as well. Also, Metamorph is very good friends with Flickerwisp. I’ll let that sink in for a minute. The value is real.

Decklist or GTFO!
That wasn’t actually a question, but point taken. Here’s what I’ll be messing around with this week:

Neo-D&T 9/11/16

Lands (23)
11 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Metamorph
Phyrexian Revoker
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Sword of War and Peace
Seal of Cleansing
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Pithing Needle
Mirran Crusader

This is probably a pretty reasonable list. I couldn’t fit the Crusader in the main while also giving the Metamorph a go, so I just shoved it in the sideboard. While I’ve traditionally been a “play it in the main or not at all” proponent of Crusader, I don’t just hate having a generically good creature in the sideboard to make slight adjustments when I otherwise don’t have strong cards.

Alrighty, that’s all I’ve got for now. Unrelated to the article itself, A couple people emailed me asking if they could donate for the good of the cause. Accordingly, I moved the “Support this Site” tab to top level of the main menu to make it more visible. One of my goals is to eventually start regular video content for D&T, but I’m still pretty far away from that goal on the financial side of things. Alternatively, if you have a digital copy of D&T that is acquiring metaphorical dust, let me know; I’d love to borrow it once Prelate and Recruiter make it to MTGO so I can start pumping out some videos.

Cavern on Kavu!

I’ve got a confession to make: I’ve been tinkering around with a new archetype for quite some time. Thalia, Heretic Cathar was a game changer for D&T, providing a new, annoying way to tax your opponent’s resources. After a few games, I started to wonder what would happen if I played that card on turn one or two. It was an idea that I discussed with a few friends, and I sketched out some decklists, but ultimately I wasn’t quite happy with the configurations I put together. Fast forward about two weeks to Gen Con, where I was playing Elves (yes, I do play other decks from time to time) and got my face stomped in by an 8-Thalia deck that was somewhere between D&T and Eldrazi. I asked Mike Scheffenacker for his list, which he graciously provided. After tweaking a few cards, I started testing this:

White Eldrazi?

Creatures (26)
Eldrazi Displacer
Phyrexian Revoker
Reality Smasher
Stoneforge Mystic
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (24)
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls
Eldrazi Temple
Karakas
Plains
Wasteland

Spells (10)
Batterskull
Chalice of the Void
Lotus Petal
Umezawa’s Jitte

Sideboard (15)
Pithing Needle
Rest in Peace
Swords to Plowshares
Thorn of Amethyst
Warping Wail
Armageddon

The deck was doing powerful things, but was fundamentally flawed. The mana base was atrocious. I rarely had true white mana to active Stoneforge, and it was somewhat common for my losses to come at the cost of drawing the wrong lands or not drawing enough lands. I decided to keep exploring the archetype, and I wanted to hate a bit harder while moving away from some of the D&T elements of the deck. I decided to try this next:

12 Thorn

Creatures (24)
Eldrazi Displacer
Lodestone Golem
Phyrexian Revoker
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Thought-Knot Seer
Lands (24)
Ancient Tomb
Cavern of Souls
Eldrazi Temple
City of Traitors
Plains
Wasteland

Spells (12)
Chalice of the Void
Lotus Petal
Thorn of Amethyst

Sideboard (15)
Rest in Peace
Swords to Plowshares
Warping Wail
All is Dust
Endbringer
Crucible of Worlds
Ratchet Bomb

This was one of my more hateful brews, but again, it didn’t quite feel right. By moving away from Stoneforge, I had decreased the dependency on white mana. By cutting Smasher, I made it so that the deck could function on one less land. While I had fixed some problems, others arose. It just didn’t feel great against decks where the thorn-effects had minimal impact, yet it was crushing most of the cantrip-based decks of the format. I didn’t write down the exact manabase I was playing, but it was something of this nature. I was working on trying to tweak this, considering adding in a Blade Splicer to give the Lodestone Golems first strike, and I was exploring the benefits of Mox Diamond vs Lotus Petal. I had played around with 6 or 7 slight variations of this list, but all of them were basically “close but no cigar” lists. It was right around that time when Recruiter of the Guard and Sanctum Prelate were spoiled, so I abandoned any testing of this archetype, and went back to work on D&T. Going into the Richmond Classic this weekend, I intended on playing this or something very similar to it:

Neo-D&T

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Sanctum Prelate
Phyrexian Revoker
Mirran Crusader
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Sword of War and Peace
Leonin Relic-Warder
Seal of Cleansing
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Pithing Needle
Sanctum Prelate

The last list I suggested had a few cute things in it like Adaptive Automaton that were conceptually cool, but didn’t quite make the cut. I played a handful of games with the new cards, which were all quite good, but I wasn’t confidant that I had constructed my D&T list correctly. Usually, I feel about like I play 73 or 74 of the “correct” cards for a given weekend. This time I was feeling like I was right on about 70 of them. I wasn’t sure about my numbers on THC, Prelate, Recruiter, and Serra Avenger. Serra Avenger seemed like the weakest link in the deck, but the vigilance and flying certainly mattered for the Delver matchups in particular; I was also trending towards having a ton of three drops, which makes your Aether Vial hands nuts, but your hands without it are a touch slow. THC is pretty nutty, but I didn’t want to drop it down to a 1-of since it’s not usually something I want to tutor for, it’s something I want to draw naturally and slam on turn 3. Prelate was insane in testing, but I was having trouble finding room for a second in the main without really starting to load up on creatures without any form of evasion. There was also tension between wanting to have bullets to search for in the main (e.g. Banisher Priest) vs just running a slew of generically good creatures.

It was about 72 hours before the event, and I was just unhappy with my lists. There were great lists, but I just felt like I had stopped short of solving the puzzle. Then I got wind of an interesting brew. It rustled my jimmies in all the right ways.

Hateful 8

Creatures (25)
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Phyrexian Revoker
Eldrazi Displacer
Thought-knot Seer
Reality Smasher
Flametongue Kavu

Spells (10)
Chalice of the Void
Umezawa’s Jitte
Lotus Petal
Lands (25)
Cavern of Souls
Ancient Tomb
Eldrazi Temple
Battlefield Forge
Plateau
Wasteland
Karakas

Sideboard (15)
Sanctum Prelate
Flametongue Kavu
Swords to Plowshares
Rest in Peace
Wear/Tear

I got this list (or more correctly one that was a few cards off) from an old friend, Paul Lynch. I send lists back and forth from time to time with Paul, as he tends to test odd deck variants that are right up my alley. The list was the brainchild of his friend Mike Scheffenacker (the same guy who gave me the first list), and the two of them had done well with it locally at a small, 20-person event. Flametongue Kavu had been showing up in some Vintage Eldrazi decks, and the thought of blinking that with Eldrazi Displacer had me giddy. I sleeved up the deck for a local 3-round Legacy event, did well, and opted to try the deck in Richmond.

Rather than write up an exact report, I’ll just comment on some general trends I saw while testing the deck. The deck thrives on virtual card advantage. While it doesn’t draw cards or have a large number of 2-for-1 effects, it does make life particularly difficult for the opponent and presses its advantage. The deck strives to make the opponent’s cards have minimal impact or make the opponent deploy their cards too slowly to matter. It plays a very strong early game, but without any true card advantage or draw engine, it does tend to lose steam once hellbent. While D&T has the Stoneforge Mystic and equipment package as well a Recruiter of the Guard to grind games out, this deck doesn’t quite have the same staying power. While this deck has more initial oomph out of the gates than Colorless Eldrazi, it does lack some of the high-end threats like Endbringer or Endless One that can go over the top of other midrange decks.

The manabase has no basics, meaning that Life from the Loam or Crucible of World coupled with Wasteland can be pretty bad news. Otherwise, the manabase felt relatively smooth. I was able to cast the vast majority of my cards most of the time, though I occasionally had to wait a few turns to cast Sanctum Prelate. Battlefield Forge served as a tri-land for my purposes, though I did get some pretty strange looks when playing that card.

Flametongue Kavu was really quite good, though he is a touch awkward at times. His trigger is mandatory, so if your opponent doesn’t have any creatures, he would have to kill himself. That’s why there aren’t more of them in the main; he just isn’t a consistent threat against decks like Miracles, Lands, or ANT. The Kavu incinerates opposing Thought-knot Seers and other midsize creatures, though Tarmogoyf tends to get out of range by the time the Kavu rolls around. Tarmogoyf is generally a problem for all of the decks of this style, so the four Rest in Peace in the sideboard are definitely necessary. Kavu served as a sometimes uncounterable kill spell off of Cavern of Souls, and that surprise factor won me multiple games over the course of the weekend.

The sideboard is a touch awkward, as is the case with most of the Chalice of the Void decks. Swords to Plowshares is the best removal option, but it doesn’t play particularly well with Chalice. That means that you either play both, accepting the fact that you may shut off your own removal, or you side out Chalice, which is likely very good against many of the decks where you want Swords to Plowshares (e.g. Burn, Delver). Dismember is another option, but since I was already running both Ancient Tomb and Battlefield Forge, I didn’t think that was a viable option. Paul’s list had a pair of Pithing Needle, which I replaced with Disenchant initially. Paul then countered by saying that Wear/Tear was likely better, and I initially agreed and ran them for the weekend. In about round three, I realized that if I had a Chalice on one, I didn’t actually have the option of easily getting rid of something like a Moat or Back to Basics. The consistency of Disenchant might outweigh the possibility of of getting a 2-for-1 with Wear/Tear, but I’m not 100% sure.

I lost in the final round and missed cash, and I was pretty disappointed. I’m not mad at myself for losing; I had a blast playing the deck, and most of my losses were to situations where my opponent played to their outs and got rewarded. I lost to Miracles twice after resolving a Chalice on 1 that was never answered; my opponents just drew multiple Jaces, Mentors, or Back to Basics and I couldn’t handle it. I lost to a Bant Deathblade deck when my opponent’s final card needed to be Disenchant or I won. I lost to Shardless when they drew their fourth Abrupt Decay as their only out to my lethal attack. That’s fine, it’s Magic. I correctly identified good lines, but just was on the wrong side of variance a few too many times. I made plenty of small errors, and I’m not sure that I sideboarded properly, but I was happy with the overall, conceptual premise of the deck. If I had 50 or so more games of playtesting under my belt, I’m sure I could have cashed. I’m just disappointed that I didn’t get to name the deck and put it up in the SCG database. There may or may not have been an extended conversation late one night at a Steak and Shake with a certain SCG employee where about 50 of my potential deck names were vetoed. I came up with a bunch ranging from “The Hateful 8” to “Death and Staxes,” and I was really curious about what it was going to end up being called. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. I’ll be setting this deck idea aside of the moment and returning to D&T. This weekend was a little vacation for me, and I was just as interested in hanging out with a friend in Richmond as I was playing in the event, so I was willing to branch out and experiment a bit. Perhaps one of you will pick up the idea and run with it.

Sanctum Prelate: No, This isn’t Chalice of the Void.

New Thalia

I thought spoiler season was effectively over. Yesterday I got Recruiter of the Guard as a new toy, and I honestly can’t say that I expected anything else from the set after that. Welp, I couldn’t have been more wrong. When LSV spoiled Sanctum Prelate today, he made a joke about how there might be a real conspiracy afoot; the conspiracy may in fact be that someone in R&D is a D&T player, and this set is just an excuse to print powerful white creatures. This set is an unreal boon for D&T players. The first thing I want to do I debunk one of the common oversimplifications of this card that I keep seeing: “It’s a Chalice of the Void on legs!” No, it really isn’t. Let’s talk about why.

Chalice of the Void is really only good at shutting off inexpensive cards, as the XX in its mana cost quickly becomes prohibitive. That’s not to say that isn’t good, as it certainly got itself restricted in Vintage. By Legacy standards, that means that Chalice is usually going to end up on zero, one, or two. Historically, Chalice has been played in various Stompy and artifact-themed decks alongside “Sol lands” or other mana acceleration as a way to try to create an insurmountable advantage on turn one. Many of the cantrip-based decks simply flop around like a fish out of water once half of their spells do nothing. Chalice is technically symmetrical, though most of the time this is not a detriment; Chalice decks tend to leave out one-drops, as Chalice most frequently gets set to one. To recap, Chalice is a proactive card for the early turns of the game; it tends to get used to shut off one drop spells and is 100% symmetrical.

Sanctum Prelate only stops non-creature spells. Let’s compare a Chalice on One vs a Sanctum Prelate on one to see a key difference between these cards. Against a RUG Delver deck, for example, Chalice stops Lightning Bolt, Delver of Secrets, Nimble Mongoose, and the usual set of cantrips. Sanctum Prelate does not stop a Delver or Nimble Mongoose. This means that landing a Sactum Prelate on one is not nearly as backbreaking as landing a Chalice; your opponent can still just blind flip a Delver and peck you to death. A Chalice on one would leave a RUG player with Tarmogoyf as their only castable card in many scenarios, but Sanctum Prelate does nothing to stop their win conditions (other than making it far more difficult to grow the Tarmogoyf or achieve threshold).

That being said, this clause is not necessarily detrimental as a whole. Decks like D&T that will play Sanctum Prelate are creature-heavy, and unlike with Chalice, you can continue casting spells into it. Let’s say you are playing against ANT. You played Sanctum Prelate on two to stop their Cabal Ritual and Infernal Tutor, which is completely reasonable. Unlike with Chalice, you can continue to cast your two drop creatures…oh, yes, that means Thalia, Guardian of Thraben can still join the party and make your opponent’s life more miserable.

Sanctum Prelate has much more flexibility in use than Chalice. For the low, low price of three mana, Sanctum Prelate allows you to shut off any number you’d like. Compare this to Chalice, which rarely achieves a number above two. This means you can shut off whatever card will beat you or wreck your board, no matter how large. As LSV noted, this means that you can name six to stop Terminus from ruining your day. You get bonus points if you Vial it in with the Miracle trigger on the stack. While the applications against most combo decks are pretty obvious, you can also get a little cheeky and name twelve against Omniscience so that Enter the Infinite is only good as Force of Will fodder. Oh, did I mention that if you set this to two, not even an Abrupt Decay will get you out of it? There’s another critical difference between Sanctum Prelate and Chalice.

In case you didn’t actively pick up on it from the examples, that means that in addition to just serving as a Chalice-like effect to shut off inexpensive spells, Sanctum Prelate can do two very different things: stop an opposing win condition or stop cards that would cause you to effectively lose the game or a large amount of tempo. How often do you find yourself thinking, “I’ll win this game as long as my opponent does not have X.” Well, Sanctum Prelate will shut off X, and every other non-creature spell that happens to cost the same amount. Let’s look at the Lands matchup now. A Sanctum Prelate on two would shut off both Life from the Loam and Punishing Fire, arguably the two most critical cards in the matchup. You get to shut off your opponent’s out and/or their win conditions with a single card, a flexibility that isn’t always there with Chalice. Also, Flickerwisp and Eldrazi Displacer can reset Sanctum Prelate when necessary. I’ll let that sink in for a second. In the early turns of the game, you can set Sanctum Prelate to one to stop opposing cantrips, but once you have an established board, you can switch it to their win condition or sweeper to lock up the game. It’s really somewhere between a Meddling Mage and Chalice of the Void instead of just being a Chalice impersonator.

In addition to all that goodness, it also happens to be a human, making Cavern of Souls even more justifiable than before. It does have the slightly restrictive WW in its mana cost, but I think that’s a good thing. That will cut down on the number of potential “8 Chalice” decks running around in the format. Sanctum Prelate also lives through Dread of Night, avoiding the dreaded one-toughness issue of many hate bears.

There are essentially two ways to incorporate Sanctum Prelate into D&T: you can include one as a tutor target or you can include four as a core part of your strategy. Truth be told, I don’t know what is correct. Between Thalia, Heretic Cathar, Sanctum Prelate, and Recruiter of the Guard, D&T is changing. It’s an exciting time to be a D&T player, but we have a ton of testing to do. I’ll be starting out with one of these in my maindeck, likely replacing the Mangara of Corondor from my decklist yesterday. Since we don’t have the chance to play Sanctum Prelate on turns one or two (in the early stages of development where it would have the most impact) I’m not sure that it is worth maxing on on all four. That being said, having multiples of this card is absurd and will quickly eliminate your opponent’s outs and ability to win.

Okay, Phil, where’s the decklist? The bad news is that you aren’t getting one today. The good news is that tomorrow’s spoilers could have Balance or Armageddon stapled to a 2/2 at the rate we are going

Recruiter of the Guard and You

New Thalia

Today’s article was going to be about my progress on a hybrid D&T and Eldrazi deck that I have been working on for the past week or so, but then Gerry Thompson revealed a card that would completely redefine the D&T archetype. Welp, looks like that can wait a week or two! How to describe my reaction to this card… If this site were slightly less academic, I’d just link to a certain clip from Archer where Krieger expresses his excitement. To keep it clean, it shall suffice to say that I was rather excited.

It’s a good time to be a lover of hate bears. In the past few years, we’ve pretty much had a playable card for D&T in every set or two. Thalia, Heretic Cathar was the latest in that line, and she was a card that was great in the shell; furthermore, players were starting to experiment with her in other shells once they saw her power in D&T. I expect all of that creative energy is now going to be turned to making Recruiter of the Guard work. It won’t be difficult.

Imperial Recruiter is the obvious point of comparison, and that card is already historically good in D&T. The price tag and additional color, however, kept many players from adopting an otherwise amazing card. While many people focus on the power of Magus of the Moon, it was Imperial Recruiter that really made the red splash worth it for many players. Recruiter provider card selection and card advantage in a deck that otherwise was relatively lacking in both. Now mono-white players can bring essentially the same effect to the table without weakening the manabase.

I say “essentially” because Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard are slightly different. For the purposes of D&T, Recruiter of the Guard is an upgrade. It gets to fetch cards like Thalia, Heretic Cathar and Flickerwisp that Imperial Recruiter cannot. In case this isn’t immediately clear, this is utterly insane. Consider a grindy matchup like Miracles. You can Recruiter for a Flickerwisp, blink the Recruiter, and go get another creature…like, say, another Recruiter or Flickerwisp! I think you get the idea, it is pretty gross.

Recruiter of the Guard also opens up some developmental space for D&T that is generally reserved for other decks: the toolbox. Many Green Sun’s Zenith decks can run cards like Scavenging Ooze, Reclamation Sage, and Gaddock Teeg in the main at very little cost, but extremely high upside. D&T now gets to do the same. I’ve had many games where I just needed to draw a certain hate bear to completely close out the game, especially in game one scenarios. Recruiter of the Guard provides that option and allows you to run a virtual eight copies of your best card or five copies of a singleton. Cards like Spirit of the Labyrinth, Mangara of Corondor, Banisher Priest, and Ethersworn Canonist are all good enough to be in the maindeck of D&T, but often don’t make the cut because they are not good against the generic field. With a tutor effect in the deck, running singletons of these cards all of a sudden becomes much more appealing.

On that note, running extremely narrow, yet powerful hate cards in the sideboard also becomes more appealing. Dread of Night got you down? Fetch a Veteran Armorer, Adaptive Automaton or Leonin Relic-Warder. Is the Eldrazi menace ruining your weekly events? Go find an Intrepid Hero. Is that budget Burn deck crushing your dreams? How about Kor Firewalker or Fiendhunter Paladin? If you are feeling cute, there’s all sorts of otherwise previously unplayable cards that probable deserve a second look ranging from good ol’ Stonecloaker to Hokori, Dust Drinker.

So what does this mean for decklists moving forwards? Until this morning, I was advocating a “protect the queen” strategy around Thalia, Heretic Cathar; the hope was that by protecting one of the Thalias, you could hope to cause your opponent to stumble just enough to secure the game with the normal assortment of tools. Recruiter of the Guard instead wants to drag the game out a touch more so that the powerful engine has a chance to get online. It’s probably reasonable to cut one Mother of Runes; the card isn’t great in the Miracles and Eldrazi matchups, and you care less about each individual creature being removed once you have a tutor stapled to card advantage. Playing a tutor also means that we’ll need to trim a couple of cards here and there, especially the more narrow effects. Serra Avenger is probably a pretty reasonable trim or cut; Thalia, Heretic Cathar was already fighting for her spots. After that, you just start trimming things here and there to incorporate a few bullets.

I think there’s also one important change to consider: the manabase. I’ve largely been advocating an 11-12 Plains manabase for stability, but it might be time to get a touch greedier. Cavern of Souls on human is likely going to hit a huge percentage of the deck now given our two new toys. I think it’s probably time to bring back the double Cavern manabase. This will mean relying a bit less on WW cards in the sideboard though. Putting all of that together, this is my first draft moving forward:

Neo-D&T

Lands (23)
10 Plains
Cavern of Souls
Wasteland
Rishadan Port
Karakas

Creatures (26)
Mother of Runes
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
Stoneforge Mystic
Recruiter of the Guard
Mangara of Corondor
Phyrexian Revoker
Mirran Crusader
Banisher Priest
Thalia, Heretic Cathar
Flickerwisp

Spells (11)
Swords to Plowshares
AEther Vial
Umezawa’s Jitte
Batterskull
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sideboard (15)
Path to Exile
Containment Priest
Manriki-Gusari
Leonin Relic-Warder
Seal of Cleansing
Ethersworn Canonist
Rest in Peace
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Adaptive Automaton
Pithing Needle
Spirit of the Labyrinth

A few of these choices are a little odd, so I’ll explain. Path to Exile will buy you plenty of time against decks like Infect and Eldrazi that threaten to end the game before your engine would get online; against those decks, Path is almost always better than Swords to Plowshares. Manriki-Gusari is a card that I believe is inferior to Sword of War and Peace in a vacuum; the only place where it is really better is the mirror. Given the recent buffs to the deck and the reprinting of many of the staples, I think D&T is going to be everywhere. I played against it four times at side events at Gen Con, and if that is any indication of its coming popularity, being ready for the mirror is well worth one dedicated slot.

Council’s Judgment has been a staple of my sideboard since its printing, but there might be options that fit better now. If were are going to increase the density of three drops in the the deck while also decreasing the true white sources in the deck, then we can’t reasonably expect to cast this card on time without messing with the other things we want to do. Accordingly, Seal of Cleansing gets the nod, as does Leonin Relic-Warder since it is tutorable. Adaptive Automaton is something that I’d like to test, but it may or may not be better than Veteran Armorer. I’m opting for Adaptive Automaton since it can provide an aggressive boost for the otherwise small Recruiters.

This list isn’t anywhere near perfect. It’s going to take some time to find the right balance of tutor targets vs generically good cards; it’s really tempting to play a bunch of narrow cards, but that may or may not be better than tutoring for staples of the deck like Mirran Crusader that were in there before. Mangara of Corondor is the loosest slot in the main for that reason, and Adaptive Automaton is probably not better than a second Gideon, Ally of Zendikar. It’s also going to be tricky to balance the three drop vs two drops slots. In the past, there has been a tension between ticking Vial up to three or leaving it at two. Now I think it’s going to be correct to tick the Vial up more frequently than before. That in turn wants you to play more three drops for your Vial hands, yet doing so makes the non-Vial hands a bit slower.

We’ve got a lot to think about in the coming weeks, and I’ll be looking forward to seeing decklists start to roll in. This is a huge buff to the deck, but it does come at a price. Expect hate for D&T to be on the rise, and don’t expect to just roll through tournaments without running into hate anymore. There may come a time where we need to trim Plains a bit to hedge more against Massacre, so be ready to adapt. Oh, hey, on that note, a copy of Eiganjo Castle might be reasonable as well. Seriously though? They just gave us Thalia, Heretic Cathar and now we get this?! I still don’t believe it. Apparently the third thing that is certain in life is that someone in R&D loves D&T.

Thalia, Heretic Cathar: A Retrospective

I’ve spent the last few weeks playtesting Thalia, Heretic Cathar (henceforth THC), and as a whole, I must say that I am quite impressed. When the card was first spoiled, I thought it was quite good, but that it would require real testing to see how many copies would be appropriate. I initially started with two copies, and very quickly bumped up to a third. I’m pretty sure that the card is here to stay. Vryn Wingmare was almost right for the deck, but quickly fell out of favor once the metagame shifted and once players started to realized how devastating -1/-1 hate was against those builds.

THC shines in 3-color matchups or any fetchland/non-basic heavy deck as an additional way to deny your opponent mana. RUG Delver, BUG Delver, Shardless BUG, and any other deck of that nature are going to have fits if this card is unanswered. A turn one Mom that survives followed by a THC on turn three might just be enough to end the game on its own against many decks in the format. The tempo loss is absolutely absurd, and if you couple that with any other meaningful plays, your opponent falls behind very quickly. It also puts your opponent in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation when it comes to fetching: Should I fetch my basic to play around Wasteland, or should I leave my basic in the deck so that I can fetch it if THC hits play? I’m all about giving my opponent chances to mess up, and THC is great at doing that.

I really underestimated how good the first strike on THC was when I initially evaluated her. When paired with Thalia, Guardian of Thraben or Mirran Crusader, you can create a wall that stops Tarmogoyf or Reality Smasher from doing anything productive. Creatures entering the battlefield tapped is a minor inconvenience most of the time, but a major annoyance for creatures with haste or token producers like Young Pyromancer.

So which matchups get noticeably better with THC in the deck? As mentioned above, THC helps against the Eldrazi and fetchland-heavy decks of the format. Tin Fins and Sneak and Show are better, as THC makes it so that those decks have to cheat in a fatty during your end step so that they can attack on their turn. Miracles is a bit better, as we now have another threat that can be protected with Karakas. Elves has gone from a nearly unwinnable matchup to just an unfavorable matchup; THC reduces the impact of a Natural Order while also making Glimpse of Nature chains much more difficult. Elves also usually only has two forests, meaning that THC might buy you two fulls turns of mana denial, which is just enough time to get a Jitte online and start eating elves.

Well, that all sounds great, so what’s the downside of having THC in the deck? The mirror is much harder if you are playing THC and your opponent is not. Opposing Karakas can wreck you in game one if you have seven targets to your opponent’s four; you can lose a ton of tempo trying to get equipment on a THC, only to have it bounced on their turn. On that note, any deck with multiple Karakas or the ability to tutor one up gets slightly worse. Since THC is often coming in at the cost of Serra Avenger, you will have fewer cards that can live through a Punishing Fire or Massacre. If you are instead cutting Mirran Crusader for THC, you lose a little bit of ability to wall Tarmogoyf or push damage through a wall of Shardless BUG’s creatures.

I believe that the positives of THC far outweigh the negatives, and I encourage you to start playtesting the card if you have not already. She is the real deal. Oddly enough, I don’t think D&T is the best deck for her. She is significantly stronger in decks that can play her on turn two via some sort of acceleration. Accordingly, I can see this card finding a home in either a White Eldrazi list or a Maverick style deck of some nature.

Spoiler: Thalia, Cathar Heretic

New Thalia

Welp, spoiler season (and my birthday for that matter) is starting out strong. Unexpectedly, we get the return of Thalia, and while this card doesn’t have quite the punch of the original Thalia, it does have some potential. Let’s look at the translation of the text:

Thalia, Cathar Heretic
Legendary Creature- Human Soldier
First strike
Creatures and non-basic lands your opponents control enter the battlefield tapped.
3/2

Perhaps the closest comparison we can make to this card is Kismet.  It’s not a perfect parallel, but it is a pretty good approximation.  Kismet is not playable in D&T at four mana, as it really doesn’t have enough oomph to take up a precious sideboard slot; however, when you chop a mana off the cost and attach it to a relevant body, it does look a little more appealing.  Imposing Sovereign had a similar ability, but without a taxation element to it, it was largely relegated to standard aggro decks of various natures.

Our new Thalia lines up very well against the typical manabases of Legacy.  For many Legacy decks, all of their lands are nonbasic, meaning Thalia’s ability is a new angle of taxation. When their lands are fetchlands, this card feels pretty dirty.  Oh yes, that fetchland will enter tapped and proceed to fetch another nonbasic land tapped in many scenarios.  If your opponent actually has utility lands, this also does a good job of slowing them down as well.  You’ll get a chance to Wasteland a Gaea’s Cradle, Grove of the Burnwillows, Wasteland, Karakas, Maze of Ith, or Thespian’s Stage before they get to do their thing.  That’s pretty cool.  Did I mention that Flickerwisp on a land just got even better?  That’s right, if you Flickerwisp out a land on your end step, it disappears for their turn, returning to the battlefield tapped at their end step.  That’s essentially two turns of mana denial!  How sweet is that?

On top of all that, Thalia also makes opposing creatures enter the battlefield tapped.  Generically, this means you’ll be able to push damage a little easier, and connecting with equipment is a touch simpler as well.  Your opponent no longer can immediately make chump blockers with Young Pyromancer or Monastery Mentor.  While that is sort of cute, it is really just a delay, not any sort of true game-changer.  For a few specific matchups, this card is going to be a headache.  Decks that are trying to cheat in a fatty (e.g. Sneak and Show or Tin Fins) are probably going to lose an entire turn to this card, as if they want to attack with their creature, they will have to put it in on your end step.  Elves players are going to have a significantly harder time piloting a Glimpse of Nature chain through this effect, and it also means they will need more creatures in play to get an immediate Natural Order kill.  You also get to giggle at Reality Smasher for a turn before dealing with it.

Oddly enough, I’m actually most excited about this card for a reason I have touched on yet: its mana cost.  D&T has been plagued with a small problem for ages: it is a deck that wants to play WW creatures while also supporting 8+ colorless sources.  Players often try to trim some of the WW cards by adding Spirit of the Labyrinth, Aven Mindcensor, or Vryn Wingmare.  Those cards inconveniently all eat it to sideboard cards like Sulfur Elemental and Dread of Night.  Thalia provides a very relevant ability alongside decent stats with a desirable mana cost…oh, and she’s also Legendary, meaning the usual Karakas shenanigans apply.  Time and testing will tell, but I believe this card has a potential future in the flex slots of the deck.

What do I play on turn one?

Upwards of 95% of the time, playing Aether Vial on turn one is going to be correct.  It rarely matters if you are on the play or on the draw, jamming Vial is usually your best play. The upside of it resolving is so strong that it usually outweighs the other options. It makes your sequencing for the rest of the game much easier and allows you to dedicate more of your resources towards disrupting your opponent.  Below are some examples of the times when this rule may not apply.  You will notice that many of these scenarios have a large number of conditional statements attached; that is no coincidence, as you really have to work to come up with scenarios where Aether Vial isn’t correct.  This isn’t an exhaustive list, but it should help you get the general idea of times where other options might be better.

Scenario 1:  Your opponent is on the play, fetches, and casts Deathrite Shaman.  Your hand contains Swords to Plowshares but does not contain Phyexian Revoker or Wilt-Leaf Liege.

When you are on the draw, the threat of a turn two Liliana of the Veil  is terrifying.  Preventing that is often a priority.   Even here, depending on the contents of your hand, it is perfectly reasonable to still play the Vial and hope your opponent does not have Liliana.  If you have a Phyrexian Revoker, playing the Aether Vial is definitely fine.  Your opponent can cast a Liliana, but you can prevent it from getting out of control with the Revoker after one activation.  If your opponent does not have a Liliana, you can revoke the Deathrite, priming yourself for a turn three Swords to Plowshares plus another two drop.

Scenario 2:  Your opponent is on the play, did not mulligan, and casts Glistener Elf.  Your hand contains Swords to Plowshares.

Against Infect, I’m all about not being dead.  That deck needs four cards to kill you on turn two:  a green-producing land (must be a forest), Invigorate, Berserk, and Glistener Elf.  They have enough mana to cast one cantrip to dig for the missing piece and still kill you on turn two.  As such, playing the Swords is probably just better.  Now if your opponent has mulliganed, there is a higher chance that you will live to see turn two (especially if they scry to the bottom), meaning there is some merit to waiting until turn two to cast the Swords to play around Daze.  That line, however, does not necessarily play around Force of Will or Vines of the Vastwood.

Scenario 3:  Your opponent is on the play with a turn 1-2 combo deck, mulliganed, scried the card to the top, played a fetchland, and passed the turn.  You have Pithing Needle in hand.

This is a weird one.  Your opponent appears to need the card on top of their library quite badly if they keep it and then take no action on their turn.  Casting your Pithing Needle either results in them fetching away an important card or a one mana Stone Rain.  Both of those scenarios are great for matchups where you just want to make it to turn two alive.

Scenario 4:  Your opponent is on the draw with a combo deck that does not play -X/-X hate.  Your hand contains Mother of Runes plus a key hate-bear.

I think of this one as the Belcher-scenario.  Your Aether Vial does not matter.  The game is decided by turn two, one way or the other.  If your Mother survives to protect the hate bear, the game is over.  Playing Aether Vial doesn’t really matter, as the fundamental turn of the game doesn’t involve its help at all.

SCG: DC Feature Match vs Seth Manfield

Below are some of my personal notes from the matchup:

Early on in the video, you see that I opt to Port a Tundra over a Volcanic Island, and my creature gets Lightning Bolted immediately afterwords.  I had the read that Seth had a Lightning Bolt based on how he played in previous turns.  While taking him off red seems optimal on paper, if I’m pretty sure he has Lightning Bolt, then the Port activation actually does nothing; he will just cast the Lightning Bolt in response and move on.  By taking the line I did, I actually deny him a mana.

I bluff Vial activations at multiple times throughout the match.  UWR Delver and UWR Stoneblade decks can be very similar.  I was not 100% sure if he had Stifle in his deck.  I wanted to do Stifle checks from time to time to make sure an important spell could actually get through.

Once Seth is on 4 lands, you’ll notice that I opt to take him off of WW instead of RR.  It is much more likely that he has something like a Council’s Judgment in his deck than something like Sulfuric Vortex.  Even if he has Sulfurix Vortex, he certainly isn’t going to play it while at two life!

So the Council’s Judgment situation…  I think the card had been out for about two weeks, and it hadn’t picked up too much steam yet or gotten a ton of exposure.  Seth was an excellent player, he was just totally confused about how the card worked.  When he called a judge for clarification, the judges were avoiding coaching him (i.e. telling him that he could vote for the same thing I did), and they largely could only read the card back to him.  We had a good laugh about it afterwards.

For those of you who frequently board out Flickerwisp, I imagine that by watching this matchup served as a great lesson for why not to do that.  At most points in the game, a Flickerwisp off the top would have been the end of Seth, and the commentators definitely picked up on that.

SCG: Philly Feature Match vs Michael Braverman

Game 1 Notes:

Braverman casts a t1 Brainstorm on my end step.  This usually indicates one of three things: the opponent has a weak hand that is missing a vital component, the player does not understand how powerful saving a Brainstorm can be, or the opponent is a combo deck that is close to going off.  I deduce that his hand is weak, and I opt to Wasteland the green source.  My play was obviously quite rewarding.

On turn two, I play an Aether Vial without playing my second land.  While Baleful Strix is a play that very likely puts him on Shardless, there is a small possibility that he is a Delver deck of some nature that is just getting cute.  This play was meant to bait a Daze.  If my opponent returns his Underground Sea, then I Wasteland the Bayou and my opponent is pretty much back to square one.

On the last turn of the game, you can see me Wasteland a mana source in my main phase, Port a mana source during the beginning of combat step, and finally use my Jitte counters in the declare attackers step.  There’s no need to take any chances.  Let the mana empty before taking action when possible.


 

Game 2 Notes:

I keep a one land hand on the draw with multiple one drops (two Mother of Runes and a Swords to Plowshares).  These cards should buy me enough time to find lands, even if I brick for a turn or two.  Don’t *always* send back one landers; they can be pretty reasonable at times.

Braverman did not come prepared for this matchup.  Without cards like Golgari Charm or Dread of Night in the sideboard, he was forced to Abrupt Decay my Moms on the first two turns.  This left my Rest in Peace, Umezawa’s Jitte, and Aether Vial to run unchecked and take over the game.

You’ll note that Braveman had two Wastelands while my first three land drops were basic Plains.  While many people try to squeeze maximum value out of their manabase, there are major benefits to having many basics, especially when you mulligan.  My deck for that weekend had 12 Plains since I expected Wastelands to be at a relative high since Eldrazi were the talk of the town.

Braverman Wastelands my Karakas, and the commentators expected me to save it with my Flickerwisp.  The Karakas was unnecessary to anything I had going, so I didn’t want to use it.  That card was there to protect Mirran Crusader and Jitte.  Once Braverman went in for the attack, I figured the coast was clear, so I used the Flickerwisp as a Fog.

While it may look like I navigated this game skillfully, I did make one error.  I realized it immediately afterwards, but I still did it.  When I connected with Mirran Crusader, I used three Jitte counters to remove a Deathrite Shaman and a Tarmogoyf.  I should have either done nothing with the counters or used two counters to push an additional four damage.  Both of those lines play around a top decked Toxic Deluge, one of my opponent’s few outs to the situation.