Magic the Gathering

So, I'm getting back into Standard for a short while. The Pro Tour had some extremely interesting decks I wanted to try out for myself, and besides that, all of my friends are going to Game Day, so I wanted to participate in it.

I'm still probably gonna strictly play Modern after RTR rotates out, unless something SUPER amazing comes out of Khans, but I digress.

The deck I'm gonna play for Game Day, and probably for the remainder of this Standard format, is "[Just] Another Stock List". I'll admit, it's mostly just a netdeck of Conley Woods' deck from the Pro Tour, but it looks super fun, so I made it. Here's his list... I'd copy exactly except for a couple of things I'll mention later:



I actually don't have a set of Llanowar Wastes or Temple of Maladys, and I only have 2 Mutavaults. So, to make up for those, I have 4 Golgari Guildgates and a bunch of basics. The deck's mana was actually already kinda awkward (if I had money for all the lands I needed, I would cut one of the Urborgs), and the fact that I have to run less duals and no scrylands makes it super bad.

Also, I have no idea what was in Conley's sideboard besides at least two copies of Tymaret, the Murder King, which is for Control apparently since it's a carddraw engine with Stockpile, except that it seemed really bad when I saw him play at the Pro Tour. There's no way to cast it in his deck; there's no red. It just sits dead in your hand until you draw the Stockpile.

So I came up with my own sideboard. It's very rushed, but I also don't particularly care about tuning it well. I'll figure it out when I actually play at that shop, since I now need to attend a new one, with apparently a different metagame. The one I used to go to all the time closed down... =(

In any case, here's my sideboard:



I've been testing it out on untap. It's actually kinda bad, rofl. But it's fun, and that's all I care about. I haven't actually won a game against anyone with this deck yet. That being said, I haven't played against control yet, which is theoretically a good matchup.

The main thing I was looking for was making my UWr Geist list a little better by being able to apply better pressure in the early game as opposed to spend the first 1-3 turns playing the react game. I might switch back to a more creature-heavy build and add an Oreskos. The guy is too good when he goes unanswered, and I would rather him get Abrupt'd than Clique. AND he also has synergy with my lone Eiganjo Castle.

When I tried out a variant of UW control, I played 18 creatures to go with Colonnades, Mutavaults, and a Sword. It was more tempo-y than it was control, so it really layed on the pressure hard on the opponent.
I might rebuild it on untap.in, just to try out Brimaz for myself. He seems really good. There were some control decks that had Hero of Bladehold as a finisher, but it was bad because it was a four-drop. I suppose that coming in a whole turn earlier makes all the difference?

Oh yes. As you know, turns 3-5 are super critical in the format. If your tapping out does not close the game or give you a huge advantage, you are too exposed. >: It's not just about the early turns, though: Brimaz being 3 mana also makes it easier to lay down a threat and defend it in the same go, especially against control mirrors.

Plus free army for 3 mana out of Bolt range? yespls.

Indeed it does. You can play some one spell games with Geist or Brimaz. It's crazy.

Sharing my Modern deck list. I'll be sticking to this for a while and tweaking it for the Tokyo meta. These people brew like mad and I don't play at just one LGS.

I like having a bit more basics for painless fetches and more protection from Blood Moon, and the Magma Sprays in the sideboard seem worse than just having 3 Anger of the Gods, but otherwise, this deck looks very solid. There are just preference changes I would make in addition to the ones I mentioned.

The main reason I stuck with the Sprays instead of more Angers is because, for example (and this has happened), if I'm on the draw against Pod, and I can't stop their T2 Pod, when they play Finks on T3, if you can't counter it, you can react to the lifegain trigger with Spray. Otherwise, they have the priority, then they'll Pod in peace. It's also relevant in the case where I'm about to get comboed out by something something Melira.

Anyway, played tonight again. Went 1-2 with the list.

Match 1 vs. Scapeshift:
-Game 1 he's scrambling to get the combo together while I go at him full force. I leave him at 2 life but he wins the counter war with a maindeck Pact of Negation-- 36 damage, ouch. Game 2 he mulligans to 5, and I Snare-Snap-Snare both of his Telling Times. He doesn't draw into land and he dies to Snapcaster beats/burn. Game 3 I autolost to Thrun when I couldn't draw into a Wrath.

Match 2 vs. Jund Pod:
-Game 1 he plays Magus of the Moon, but that enables my Bolt. He can't do anything about Geist and Brimaz because I had the Path-Snap-Path for both of his Finks. Game 2 I keep a hand of 2 Arid Mesa and fetch for a Plains and a Mountain, but he sticks Blood Moon on the table and Stone Rains my Plains. Welp. Game 3 was more of the same, except he calmly and deliberately comboed me out while I scrambled for answers. >:

Match 3 vs. R/G Tron:
-Game 1 he assembles the combo and I pop a Ghost Quarter on his Tower but he has another one in his hand. I pop the second Quarter but he also has Sylvan Scrying to replace it. I couldn't push enough damage to kill him before he went Ugin -> Emrakul. Game 2 is almost exactly the same with less land popping and more Oblivion Stones for my Geist and Clique.

Overall I feel that my deck took a strong hit in early game presence and that came back to bite me in the ass. I played vs. Twin, Ad Nauseam and Merfolk for a while too, and it was really evident in those cases. Looks like I'll be reverting to more Young Pyromancer-- maybe something like 4 Snaps/4 Delver/3 Pyro/3 Geist. Batterskull and Keranos on the side then top off the curve at 4 mana with 2 Cryptics. Then we could play 23 lands instead. I'll figure it out.

Only 3 Pyro? It generates so many dudes in a hurry, it's so awesome. At least, in my UR Delver deck, I wanna draw it all the time. It's the best creature in the deck by far. You don't necessarily need to untap with it for it to be good, either, you can play it with burn or counterspell mana up, and it'll still produce one token at least.

Some old school RWU Delver lists I saw went super beatdown with Steppe Lynx. How aggressive are you planning to transform the deck into?

EDIT: On an unrelated note, I actually took third place with that Necromancer's Stockpile list at FNM last night. It was awesome and fun. In fact, all my friends' brews topped: Bant Midrange was 1st, Dimir Grind was 2nd, my Stock List was third, and an interesting take on White Weenie was 4th.
The deck was not as bad as I originally thought, I was just playing it wrong. It still seems too gimmicky to be consistently good, but I'll still enjoy playing it for a while.

I've only ever needed to draw a game once before today, due to time. I've usually lost in extra turns; it was only in Theros sealed in which the game actually couldn't close out, and we had to draw.

That changed today during Game Day... My record was 2 wins, 1 loss, and 3 draws, and one of those wins came from me beating my opponent in game 1, and time being before we could even finish game 2. I mean, I know the deck I chose was slow, but I didn't expect it to be this slow... lololol.

I ran a Maze's End deck with a small Fog package. It's inspired by the list Gabriel Nassif played at PTM15, but I tweaked some stuff because I wasn't happy with some of the choices in the deck.
It was a fun deck to pilot, regardless of my result. I forgot how much I enjoyed any deck with an alternate win-con.

The thing I got 3 draws with:



I didn't have a sideboard, since I didn't really know what it should be. I had about 12 cards in mind, but owned very few of the more expensive cards. I thought of the rest once I got back home. I'd probably would've used something like this:

Ah yes~ I used to play TurboFog back in the day, before I realized I don't have the required patience to run those type of decks. >: I like playing control but I've never been a Draw-Go type of guy... you know, like sometimes you just KNOW someone is the kind of person who pays the mana cost on Force of Will.

I actually hate most forms of Turbofog, except that when I saw this version, it actually kinda felt like control, so it actually appealed to me, lol. Most things look too reliant on the fogs. This has some other cool things going for it, carddraw, tempo-wraths, etc. And those Restocks feel good every time. SO MUCH VALUE! =D
Most turbofog decks rely to hard on fogging EVERY TURN, and I hate it. They're so dead against control!

I, too, am not the biggest fan of Draw-Go, unless I have a very strong reason to like the deck. Again, I LOVE Maze's End, and I did play a very slow UB control deck whose only wincon was Nephalia Drownyard, because I love that card, too.
I prefer that my control decks either have: a) A very interesting gimmick, or b) Aggressive elements, so that it can switch roles in a heartbeat.

I just might be playing this!

I'm rocking the mono-green Nykthos Devotion list on both untap.in and on paper, and I am LOVING the Devotion mechanic. I might transfer some of that love to Standard after rotation... still too early to tell though.

Need to finish rounding out my GW Hatebears deck before heading to something I'd like to call :

Zur Aggro

Hey, another Travis Woo fan! Yeah, this brew looks spicy. He always has something fun going on in that head of his.

I'm still not a fan of the devotion mechanic because it rewards you for playing incorrectly by overextending. In Standard, at least, every color of devotion, besides black, die to ONE Supreme Verdict. The way they're built require you to play out as much as possible, then they just wipe it all away and you have no chance. At least in black, most of your devotion actually comes from noncreature permanents, so they're, by design, more resilient.



Ooooh, A Zur deck. I've seen this before, back when Deathrite was still legal. It looks awesome and fun.

Hey chose my next avatar guys.


My three decks I go between are Izzet, Rakdos, and Orzhov right now.

After watching this :

[youtube]http://youtu.be/jEC7XZuoI7U.*?[/youtube]

I really want to play Junk Reanimator.

Oh, yeah, I used to jump back and forth between these a lot, probably a year or so, ago.
Orzhov is always cool.

I've continued to play some Standard lately, though I still prefer tuning Modern decks. I've been in love with my Maze's End deck, still, and I think I've almost got it perfect. The Stockpile list still sucks, but is still fun.
Finally, my Blood Moon decks are making good progress. I now have a nice large chunk of Skred Red, and I'm now working on getting together the stuff for Blue Moon, though that's a lot harder since many blue cards in Modern are expensive... X_X
Hopefully I'm able to get the job at the card shop I go to, so I can bring in more cash, and even get an employee discount, lol.

So last night my friend hits me up on Facebook and tells me that he's taking me to a 'big Modern event on Sunday'. So I head over...

...and it's motherfucking Tomoharu Saito's store.

He was at GP Kobe so no meet and greet but I was like, FOUND IT.

Played UWr Delver with Pyromancer, no Gitax Probes and no Vapor Snags, replaced them with Keranos and Paths. Big mistake.

Round 1 vs. BUG Faeries (0-2)
-Both games I was completely overrun by Bitterblossom and multiple Goyfs. I tried to put some pressure on his inevitability by burning him to the dome, but since I'm no longer running Geist, my whole deck was turned on to his Abrubt Decays.

Round 2 vs. BG Zombies (1-2)
-I mulled to 5 on the first game and had no readily available burning, and he used Geth's Verdict and Tragic Slip on my dudes to push the bodies through. Game 2 I took it thanks to the awesome of Batterskull and Pillar of Flame, but game 3 I kept a 1-lander, I hit him with flipped Delver, then he dropped 2 Fulminator Mages back to back. Sadness.

Round 3 vs. UB Control (1-1)
-Damn! This one took forever. Game 1 we just went back and forth back and forth until I drew the lone Colonnade to push the win. Game 2 I mulled to 5 and he had double Inquisition, which put me too far behind. We took a draw on game 3.

Round 4 BYE.

Round 5 vs. 4C Gifts (0-2)
-I had to worry about Goyf, Bob, Liliana, Decay, Snapcaster, Path, AND Thoughtseize on the same deck? Shit. He grinded me with Raven's Crime as I was scrambling to draw something of relevance, and I just lost to like 17 maindeck permissions.

This was really educational, though. I've barely been to super big events like these so I was super nervous, which I'm sure ended up affecting my play a huge deal. If I had kept Geist and a deck I actually knew, instead of changing paces like I did, maybe it would've gone better. One of my friends ended up at first, went 5-0 with Norin Sisters. Insane.

Norin Sisters is a crazy deck, lol. I've never played against it, but I've seen it in action. The Norin interactions look super annoying, lol.

When Bitterblossom was unbanned, I figured a Green version with Goyf would eventually come out of it. Goyf just seems to make everything better, lol (except Twin, TarmoTwin still sounds like downgraded Twin to me).

Did you have Rest in Peace in the board for Zombies? It sounds like that deck straight up does nothing with that in play.

Oooooh, UB Control? I've actually wanted to try that for a while, but never really felt motivated enough to actually build a list. Do you remember what was in it?

Yeah, Gifts does that. They just tutor for all the good stuff and make the game into solitaire sometimes.