Modern Prepartion Part 1

It's been a while since I've focused on Modern. I played in the Modern SCG Classic in DFW, but that was largely a meme deck with no real preparation. I've had my ManaTraders account in vacation mode since the RPTQ in December, playing exclusively on Arena in the meantime.

Recently they announced that the Mythic Championship in London will be Modern. Since it won't use the new cards, and I'd be stunned at any additional bannigs after the KCI banning, the format today is what will be played. One interesting wrinkle is the experimental mulligan being used. I'm still doing some thinking about what that means, and I have yet to reach any conclusion. Not being able to use it on MTGO will probably make it take longer to get a consensus.

I have about eight weeks before I leave for London. I'm leaving a week early, but won't be bringing many cards since it is a huge hassle so I hope to have my deck locked in by the time I leave. I'm not sure how many parts this blog will have for prep but I'll write them as I go.

I'm going to use the first week mostly for decks I don't believe to be very good but that I would like to try out just to get it out of my system. Last night I played two leagues. This first league I played a UB Spirits list to a 2-3 record. I beat Humans and Eldrazi Tron. I lost to Bant Spirits, Zoo, and Mardu Humans. Here is the list I played:

4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Plagued Rusalka
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Bloodghast
4 Nether Traitor
4 Metallic Mimic

3 Smuggler's Copter
4 Lingering Souls
3 Collective Brutality
1 Fatal Push
1 Liliana of the Veil

4 Aether vial

4 Darkslick Shores
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
4 Polluted Delta
4 Marsh Flats
1 Godless Shrine
2 Swamp
1 island
1 Watery Grave
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Sunken Ruins

Sideboard
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Thoughtseize
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Damping Sphere
2 Bitterblossom
2 Fatal Push


There is a lot of interesting synergies I discovered when looking at Spirits in other colors besides Blue and White. A lot of this overlaps nicely with the Black Zombies lists I've seen pop up and always wanted to try but never had a chance to. My big takeaway is that most of the creatures in this deck are bad. The spells were niceish. The Mardu Humans opponent seemed to be doing a lot of what I was doing except cheaper and better.


The next league I played UBg Mill:

1 Breeding Pool
2 Darkslick Shores
3 Field of Ruin
1 Forest
3 Island
2 Misty Rainforest
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Overgrown Tomb
4 Polluted Delta
2 Shelldock Isle
2 Swamp
1 Watery Grave

4 Archive Trap
3 Assassin's Trophy
2 Crypt Incursion
2 Fatal Push
3 Mission Briefing
1 Murderous Cut
3 Surgical Extraction
4 Visions of Beyond
2 Collective Brutality
4 Glimpse the Unthinkable
2 Ensnaring Bridge
3 Mesmeric Orb

4 Hedron Crab

Sideboard
1 Bontu's Last Reckoning
2 Collective Brutality
1 Crypt Incursion
1 Damnation
1 Dismember
2 Extirpate
1 Fatal Push
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Nature's Claim
1 Surgical Extraction


I went 0-3 with this deck, losing to Red Phoenix, Harden Scales, and BW Eldrazi and Taxes. Some of those are likely awful matchups (lol at Crab vs Phoenix, or Archive Trap vs Leonin Arbiter). That said, I was not impressed at all with this deck. The one stregnth I think Mill has in any format is being a functional Burn deck where you just need to draw enough Mill spells before they can kill you. This decks didn't seem to run nearly enough, instead clogged up my hands with mediocre removal spells and actual do nothings like Surgical Extraction. When I first started playing I thought Assassin's Trophy was a must on the search that would enable Archive Trap like Feild of Ruin, but once I discovered this was not the case I declared the green splash to be unplayable (I'd already had some issues with drawing the Forest). I'd stay away from this deck, or at least if you want to play Mill keep it two colors and have more actual Mill cards.


That's all for now. Unsure what's next.
-Ty

Jeff Zandi and the Texas Magic Hall of Fame

Life has a funny way of sneaking up on you.

Jeff Zandi has passed away, and with his absence there will be a hole that can never be filled. Texas Magic will never be the same.

Throughout the history of Magic in Texas, Zandi has been pretty much the only constant. When I started playing competitively in 2003 he already had the respect of the entire community. It seemed to me he was the elder statesman of Texas Magic, and that he'd always been that way.

While he wasn't the founder of the Texas Guildmages, he eventually became the de facto leader after many of the other old-timers drifted away. Zandi never wavered in his passion for the game. The weekly Guildmage meetings at his house go back such an incredible amount of time it's hard for me to wrap my head around. Almost anyone who was anybody in Texas Magic in the 90s and 2000s drafted at his place at least once. Many went on to become full fledged members of the Guildmages under his guidance.

The Texas Magic community was fairly tight-knit for the first 15 years or so. Before the games player base doubled and doubled and doubled again in the late 2000s, you could show up to a PTQ and recognize over half the participants. Zandi probably recognized 90% of them. He might not have ever been the best player in the state though he played in 6+ Pro Tours. He was an very good judge and excellent TO. He created a sense of community, spotlighting the various players who were having success in the state in his weekly updates (wherever he ended up posting them).

This loss hits me hard. I've always been a fan of the history of the game, and I've done my best to learn from older players about the events that happened before I was around. I always hoped to one day combine my knowledge with Zandi's to create a Texas Magic Hall of Fame. I envisioned it as a tribute to the somewhat rugged and wild culture that seemed unique to Texas. The players who were legends but for whatever reason could never make the next step to the national or global level. The Judges and TOs who ran the events in memorable (thought not always good) ways. With this loss, I don't really know how I could recover that history he had in his head.

I do know that no matter what the criteria would have been for enshrinement, and no matter who would have been choosing inductees, there would only have ever been one as clearly deserving as Zandi. So perhaps for now I'll start the Texas Magic Hall of Fame with this inaugural class of one. He was Texas Magic, and it's hard to imagine it without him.

The  Texas Magic Hall of Fame
Jeff Zandi - 2019

-Ty

PS - This is a good article published fairly recently about Zandi on mtg.com. I'll update more as I find it.

Edit: Jeff's most recent article is here. You can find more by him in the archive. He wrote an incredible amount over the years chronicling the various meetings of the Guildmages.

Merfolk at SCG DFW

Standard Open

This past weekend was the SCG Open in Fort Worth. I played a similar Merfolk list to the one I played last weekend. I swapped a Watertrap Weaver for a Swift Warden and made some sideboard adjustments, but nothing major. I went 3-3 in the Standard Open before dropping. My friend Will Lowry also played the same list and went 3-3-1 before dropping as well. He played it again on day two in the Standard Classic, finishing 4-4. Here are some takeaways.

Unlike last week, my opponents decks seemed much better. Almost all had a clear plan and sometimes the plans were difficult for us to beat. Thief of Sanity and Thought Erasue from both Esper and Sultai variants proved difficult to beat. Theif would be impossible to kill while using your best cards against you. Thought Erasure would let them play for the correct late game plan by preventing your countermagic from being useful or letting your midrange cards take over. Your great draws still felt very good but there seemed to be fewer and fewer of them. I think we were winless in a combined four matches against Esper Control, which I had counted on being a good matchup when preparing for the RTPQ.

My rounds were as follows:
R1 - RG Aggro W
R2 - UR Drakes L
R3 - UG Reclamation Creatures (No Nexus, Biogenic Ooze, Dream Eater, Adapt creatures) W
R4 - Temur Reclamation Niv-Mizzet L
R5 - Mono Red W
R6 - Esper Control L

I was willing to call it a loss and move on. I'll credit my RPTQ win to a few lucky matchups. Will wasn't willing to give up so he continued playing on Sunday and kept finding more and more flaws with the deck. It is still a fun deck and I think it has potential but I'm unsure what to do to fix it. I'd start with 4x Kraul Harpooner in the sideboard.

Modern Classic

I brought some of my Modern Merfolk cards just in case I didn't make day two and didn't want to play Standard again. This was exactly the situation I found myself in, so I decided to play a brew I had been thinking about. I was going to play Merfolk with 4x Lighting Bolt 4x Wizard's Lightning. I began pulling the cards out I needed and realized I forgot to bring my Mutavaults. This may have been a blessing in disguise, because it let me redo the manabase and play the following list:

3 Cursecatcher

4 Silvergil Adept

4 Benthic Biomancer

4 Harbinger of Tides

4 Merfolk Trickster

4 Lord of Atlantis

4 Master of the Pearl Trident

3 Merrow Reejery

4 Wizard's Lightning

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Aether Vial

4 Spirebluff Canal

3 Steam Vents

4 Flooded Strand

4 Polluted Delta

1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds

2 Island

Sideboard

2 Mistcaller

2 Grafdigger's Cage

4 Wizard's Retort

2 Unified Will

1 Ceremonius Rejection

2 Alpine Moon

2 Dispel

I went 6-3, losing the last round playing for prizes. The deck was a fun take but I don't think the red is entirely necessary. The bolts caught some people off guard in game one, and were very useful against other creature decks where I could never be attacked with combination of bolts, Harbinger, and Trickster. You should absolutely cut a Steam Vents for an Island if you play this again. The Alpine Moon was very impressive in the SB and something I would play again. I missed Mutavault in a couple of matchups and felt like I needed another land or two in the draws that didn't include Aether Vial. Benthic Biomancer was not as great as I thought. I would prefer 4th Cursecatcher and probably the 4th Reejery and 2 Biomancer if I were to play it again. 

My rounds were as follows:
R1 - Jeskai Control- L

R2 - UW Control - W

R3 - UW Spirits - W

R4 - MonoRed Phoenix - L

R5 - Burn - W

R6 - MonoRed Phoenix - W

R7 - Hardened Scales - W

R8 - RG Scapeshift - W

R9 - RW Prison - L

I'm probably done with Merfolk in both formats for a while, but I'm sure I'll come back to revist them at some point in the future.

RPTQ Report *TOP 8*

My previous two posts about preparation for this event are here and here.

It was the last RPTQ for the foreseeable future (who knows what the future for MTG holds at this point anyway). I figured why not play the deck I wanted to. I've loved Merfolk for so long, dating back to this event. I've played it in countless events in Modern and Legacy. When they reprinted Silvergil Adept, I even made Will Lowry play it in our Team SCG Open last January. I've been playing it occasionally on MTG Arena with a small hope that they might improve the deck when RNA came out, but I wasn't expecting much. 

Here is this list I played.

I definitely would not say that I broke it. It is a good deck, probably good enough for top tier in Standard at least as of now. The format still seems wide open so having a good proactive strategy and very flexible reactive cards is a good place to be. It has some weak spots which I'll get to later, but I don't expect it to change the metagame.

The Tournament

For the first time, the Dallas RPTQ had enough players that all eight members of top eight would qualify for the PT. 99 people showed up to play, so it looked like a record of 6-1 or 5-0-2 would get the invite. I was surpised at the turnout given that it was also Super Bowl Sunday. I think it being the last RPTQ had more qualified players than in the past.

Round 1 - Mono Blue Tempo

I win game one with four Merfolk Mistbinder to force him to chump with a Tempest Djinn. Game two I try to buy some time with a Sleep but he was able to stabilize and I ran out of gas. Game three he had his own Sleep and I maybe got too aggressive in response and lost to a Merfolk Trickster.

0-1

Round 2 - Esper Midrange

Game one I have an aggressive start with multiple Kumena's Speakers and Mistbinder. I was able to finish him off with a Trickster. Game two I use Transmogrifying Wand to turn his two Hero of Precinct One into Oxen. I then stole his Thief of Sanity with Entrancing Melody and played a second copy when I attacked him. He played a Lyra, but she also turned out to be an Ox in disuguise.

1-1

Round 3 - Mardu Aggro

Game one I do some early damage in race with his Boros Challengers, but eventually the board stalls after I Spell Pierce his Heroic Reinforcements. I can't attack because of his Judith but he doesn't have any good attacks either. Eventually I draw the fourth land I need for Sleep and win. Game two I misplay and steal the wrong Boros Challenger with Entrancing Melody so his lives through the Deafening Clarion. I trade my Kumena for it but he draws more gas off the top. Game three I'm in control the whole time drawing multiple cards off Kumena that his deck isn't really capable of killing and I easily win.

2-1

Round 4 - Esper Control

Game one is the most absurd thing I experienced on the day. I trade creatures for his removal and counterspells early, setting up a Kumena in play with Swift Warden back up vs his one card in hand. He plays Ixalan's Binding, I cast the Wardern but he topdeck Absorb. I'm now very unlike to win but we keep playing. The pace of play is fast and furious. I resolve a couple of Silvergill Adepts and they keep pressure on his Teferis. I kill the first two easily and with a little effort I'm also able to kill his third. Eventually he kills all my creatures and gets back to almost 20 life with Absorb and Vraska's Contempt. I'm still waiting for the inevitable loss but he hasn't shown me a win condition yet. Eventually he uses The Eldest Reborn to take my Swift Warden from my yard and start attacking me. I'm at 20 still and he is running low on library. I play some creatures to try to block, but he either counters or kills them. Eventually one sticks but he has Dispersal to get in some damage. I finally manage to chump for one turn, and he decks after attacking me to 2. I'm stunned since I was mainly continuing to play just to see his deck. I make short work of him game two with my twleve counterspell sideboard plan.

3-1

Round 5 - Sultai

He's playing more UG splashing black for Thought Erasure and Hostage Taker. I prefer this version of Sultai personally than one that plays a lot of double black cards. I win game one when he never draws a fourth mana source. Game two he has two Thought Erasure to take my two Entrancing Melody and I'm too far behind. Game three he uses Hostage Taker to play my Merfolk Mistbinder, pumping his Branchwalker, Jadelight Ranger, and Zeganna! I fortunately have a large board myself with the other three Mistbinders and Kumena. He can't attack and eventually I draw into Sleep for the win.

4-1

Round 6 - WU Midrange

His deck had Knight of Grace, History of Benalia, Senate Guildmage(!), Teferi, and Absorb. I really wanted to find a deck with Senate Guildmage in it, but I'm not sure this is the right spot. Game one I Spell Pierce his Ixalan's Binding on my Kumena and he runs away with the game. Game two he's stuck on three mana so I put as much pressure on him to kill him before he can Settle or Cleansing Nova me and I'm able to do it.

5-1

After six rounds, the point totals of the top 12 players looked like this:

18

16

16

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

15

12

The top four players can draw. The 15 that gets paired down has to play. The table 4 match also has to play. Table 3 can draw if the 15 that gets paired down loses, otherwise they have to play. 

I had by far the worst tiebreakers, so I end up with the pair down. In this situation it's actually not that bad since I can hopefully get a concession since the 12 point player won't get in with a win (assuming table 3 draws). I'm fairly certain table 3 knows what's up since I told Jason Cornell what would happen as we analyzed the standings together and he ended up on table 3. 

I'm paired against Hal Brady, a long time friend, and I explain the situation. He is still holding out hope that maybe he can sneak in, so he tells me we will play and if I win he won't have to worry about making the difficult decision to concede. If he were to win, he says he'd still think about it.

Round 7 - Mono Blue Tempo

Game one I mulligan to five and get stuck with an uncastable Swift Warden. I also have Sleep that might let me steal a win but I never draw the fourth land. Game two I have a very fast start and he doesn't have Curious Obsession so the race is much easier. I kill him while still having Incongruity backup to stop him if he were to get enough damage. Game three is very close but he has Curious Obsession turn two and a follow up one-drop that prevents me from using Trickster to stop it. I have multiple one drops and do my best to push through damage, but he has the Dive Down to protect is Pteremander when I try for Incongruity to prevent lethal.

5-2

At this point Hal says he's going to concede. At first I don't think I hear him correctly but we get the result down on the match slip and I'm now 6-1 and locked for top 8 and my ninth Pro Tour! Table three ended up drawing on time, so we also avoided the feel-bad of Hal giving up a spot since he would have missed top 8 even with the win. Hal is now my third favorite Magic player in Texas!

Made top 8 of the RPTQ and I'm now qualified for London! Huge thanks to @HalBrady for scooping in the last round. pic.twitter.com/mjOYwo1E0v

— Ty Thomason (@ceciliajupe) February 4, 2019

Karma Comes Back

I've conceded in spots like Hal's before. I've conceded four times in the Finals of PTQs when I was unable to attend the PT. But I never have been on the receiving end of one of these concessions until now (maybe I'm too nice). 

I fully plan on playing this at the SCG Open this weekend. I'll need to relook at the Mono Blue matchup since I lost twice to it. It seems like this is the one deck where I'd rather have Dive Down than Spell Pierce, or maybe an actual bounce spell to handle the Curious Obsession draws. I'm sure there are some other cards I can try too. 

I had planned on going to London for the Grand Prix anyway as part of a family vacation to Ireland to visit my sister-in-law, but now I get to play the Pro Tour instead! Also, getting part of the trip paid for is nice. Another PT, maybe I'll finally cash at one!

Thanks,

Ty

RPTQ Testing

Here I'm going to talk a bit about the process I used for testing for the RPTQ. I chose to do my testing almost entirely on MTG Arena for this tournament. I previously used Arena for testing for GP Denver back in October, but this would be my first foray into serious constructed testing. Given the recent announcements about the future of Arena, it seems like a good time to continue my dive in. It was much easier to obtain the cards on Arena than on MTGO, even with a Mana Traders account. I saved several hours over the month or so by avoiding the clunky MTGO trading interface, and who knows how much time by the increased game speed.

The biggest drawback was likely quality of opponent. The Twitter account MTGArena decks retweets anyone who shares lists that get five wins in a Traditional Constructed event. From my experience, these events are incredibly soft. I think I was 20-3 at some point with Merfolk, and as much as I'm hoping that means I broke the format (see last post), I'll be realistic and say it's probably not the case. Sideboarding helped tremendously against the weaker players where a strategy they might not be prepared for will not only give you an advantage, but outright win you the game.

The Deck

I've had Merfolk built as a casual Arena reward chasing deck since I first installed the software. There are lots of different ways to build it. You can focus on going wide with Deeproot Waters. You can play lots of +1+1 counters like Merfolk Branchwalker, Jadelight Ranger, Deeproot Elite, and Hadana's Climb. The version that had the most fun was a Wizard heavy version with Wizard's Retort supported by Silvergil Adept and Merfolk Trickster (both auto-includes) and Watertrap Weaver. As RNA release approached, I knew I would get Breeding Pool to improve the manabase, but I wasn't hopeful for much more. 

Unclaimed Territory is one of the very few lands in standard that draws you to play it. There are no spell lands besides Arch of Orazca that don't start out as some other permanent type. My traditional strategy of "play the best lands" really means you either play some gate concoction, a tribal deck with Territory, or some Arch control or midrange deck.

The New Cards

Then I saw the spoiler for Benthic Biomancer. This card is legit. It's actually played out better than I thought after initially reading it. I think it will be a real contender in Modern. And it's a Wizard. So my first brew took my old Wizard list and added Breeding Pool and Biomancer. The deck was solid, but unspectacular. I was running out of gas a bit more than I liked, likely due to trying 23 lands since I figured I had more looting available. I was still winning matches and events (mainly thanks to 4x Sleep in the sideboard), but it didn't feel like anything special.

I then saw a few lists pop up with Incubation / Incongruity. I had considered this breifly, but never actually tried it. I also switched Mist-Cloak Herald for Kumena's Speaker when the Herald wasn't doing enough damage on its own. The results felt incredible immediately. I was killing opponents much quicker thanks to the added damage boost of Speaker, and I had Kumena himself more often thanks to Incubation. The 1cc sorcery filled out the curve nicely, which finally lead me to cut Deeproot Elite entirely (this card is pretty bad as a turn two play on the draw, and if you aren't casting it on turn two what is the point really?)

I quickly settled on a core set of creatures supported by Incubation and then a few select spells. It almost always included two maindeck copies of Sleep with two more in the sideboard. The ability to effectively double your teams damage for four mana and go directly to the opponent's face means there is almost no race you are out of.

The Sideboard

You get 8+ counterspells along with several flash creatures to let you play a traditional "fish" game against combo and control decks. You have Sleep to handle other creature decks. Transmogrifying Wand was very impressive against Drakes. I wanted a repeatable card advantage source beyond Kumena for grindier matchups. At first I had Jace, Cunning Castaway (and his loyal companion, Jace's Sentinel for a while too! Thankfully they both near unplayable and I didn't have to track down the mythic 2cc 1/3). Jace had his moments, but was very inconsistent. Eventually someone suggested Karn he performed his role perfectly. He's also castable even with three or more Unclaimed Territory in play.

The Matchups

I was winning everything. Every event I'd get 5 wins, many times going undefeated. It was likely a multitude of factors, but eventually I realized something strange. I never faced Mono Red on MTG Arena. This is likely because the MonoRed players were stickly primarily to the Ladder with best of one matches, something I had no interest in during my preparation. Here is a basic synopsis of matchups besides monored:

Green Dudes, etc - they can't beat Sleep, they have a hard time answering Kumena

White Dudes, etc - still can't beat Sleep, still difficulty answering Kumena

Drakes - if you can counter / answer their threats, you have all the time in the world. Alternatively use counters to protect your team and swarm their lone creature

Control - Play a dude or two, counter their responses, repeat until they die.

Combo - like Control 

Red - ????

I finally played some focused testing vs Red. I started off by losing the first nine games before stealing a win in the tenth. Goblin Chainwhirler is a messed up card. So Red is bad, my main strategy is to dodge, hope for mana screw, or try to play the anti-control plan against them. 

Play What You Want

I'm hoping for the best. I'll play this at the SCG Open next weekend regardless of my finish at the RPTQ because it is that much fun.