Tuesday 9 April 2013

Enchantments EDH

Hey Guys!

Today I thought I would take a little change of direction from my usual tournament reports. I could write an article about my Wildspeaker Jund list I took to the Modern PTQ in Manchester, however I feel the Modern format as a whole has been dominating the report side of things. So this article is going to be about my new found love - EDH! 


As most of you are aware, EDH is a casual fun format (well it should be!) and so I felt the need to stick to a theme and a theme which is both competitive (I don't mind losing but not all the time!) and fun to play at the same time. I needed inspiration, however inspiration is only around the corner when you work at Manaleak, so when sorting through cards I found a card I fell in love with - Attrition. I then began to think of all the insane token producing enchantments (Bitterblossom, Awakening Zone, Assemble the Legion, Luminarch's Ascension) and at that point I knew I had my EDH theme figured out - I would play Enchantment Control! From the token generators stated above, I would be playing Black, Green, White and Red so I may as well play Blue too and go 5 colour, which leads me on to my commander choice. 

Good 5 colour Legendary Commanders:

- Progenitus - The ultimate bad-ass creature, it is rather expensive being 10 mana and all, but the fact that is has PROTECTION FROM EVERYTHING surely makes up for it.

- Child of Alara - A very popular EDH 5-colour commander, who would want to destroy your commander if it meant everyone else's non-land permanents got destroyed? I know I wouldn't want to be the one responsible for that sort of carnage.

- Cromat - If you want flexibility, Cromat is your man. He destroys creatures, he flies, he regenerates, he can pump himself and he can be put on top of your library. He is good in almost all scenarios.

- Sliver Legion/Queen/Overlord - These are amazing commanders in the right decks (i.e Sliver decks), although I can see Sliver Queen being awesome in a non-Sliver deck.

Out of these, I choose Cromat to be my commander, I love versatility in my control decks and so he seemed like the obvious choice (although I was very tempted to go with Progenitus). So we have a commander and a core theme (enchantments), so lets get to the engines the deck has.

Protection:

Both in Multiplayer and 1vs1 EDH, you will need time to establish a winning position, this time is given to you by protective enchantments, I felt the following were acceptable starting points:
- Ghostly Prison
- Propaganda
- Sphere of Safety
- Aurification
- Dissipation Field
- No Mercy

These Enchantments give an opponent an undesirable effect if they attack you, be it paying mana, having their creatures die as a result or just turning them into walls! These effects are much better in Multiplayer games, where diplomacy is king.

- Martial Law
- Detention Sphere
- Faith's Fetters
- Prison Term
- Oblivion Ring
- Arrest
- Seal of Doom
- Attrition

These Enchantments are used as point-removal to deal with those nasty threats that otherwise would go unanswered. These are much better in 1v1 EDH, however they are also necessary in Multiplayer too. It is always good to have a balance of point-removal and mass protection, neither one can protect you by themselves.

- Pernicious Deed
- Grave Pact
- Moat

These offer some unique protection, Deed, when played correctly is a one-sided wrath effect. Grave Pact offers a great deterrent in Multiplayer EDH to kill your commander and tokens, it also combos well with Attrition. Then there is Moat, well Moat is Moat, everyone loves to hate it (do not play this early in a multiplayer game, you will be targeted almost immediately!). 

Draw:

Drawing cards is extremely important in EDH matches and so having a dedicated section devoted to it is important, I currently have the following draw engines in my deck:

- Mind Unbound
- Enchantress's Presence
- Abundance
- Argothian Enchantress
- Underworld Connections
- Phyrexian Arena
- Mesa Enchantress
- Sylvan Library

These are what I currently have, I am missing one more enchantress effect and perhaps a few staple draw effects in EDH, such as Staff of Nin, Consecrated Sphinx. Although I feel I could afford a few of these non-Enchantment draw-effects, I cannot overlord on them due to the nature of my win conditions (coming up).

I have the basic tutor effects also, such as Idyllic, Enlightened and Demonic Tutor.

Win Conditions:

So we have drawn lots of cards and have a nice defence set up, now it is time to strike! How does this deck strike at the opponent? Well it has several ways. The least exciting way to win the game is via a slow beatdown strategy using tokens generated by Bitterblossom, Assemble the Legion, Luminarch Ascension and Sigil of the Empty Thrones. I feel that in an enchantment deck, Sigil is the best win condition out of the aforementioned token generators, make a 4/4 angel every time I play an enchantment? Yes Please!

Another way to win the game is to do it with one massive lethal attack, notice the cards I have in this EDH deck and then take a look at the card to the right - Opalesence. This card will win you the match on the spot and is a key reason to why we play so many enchantments.

If beating down isn't your thing, then the deck also has a combo win-condition. This combo has seen quite a bit of legacy play and involves having Rest in Peace on the battlefield at the same time as having Helm of Obedience or Energy Field, although Energy Field doesn't mean an auto-win, it can effectively do so against the right deck.

Planeswalkers are another key route to victory, especially with cards such as Doubling Season and Jokulhaups.
  
Well that is about it for my EDH deck! No matter what you build in EDH, just remember to have fun and make your deck as fun as possible!

Thank you for reading guys!

Chris Delo




Thursday 21 February 2013

Modern U/W



Hey Guys! Well it has been a while since my last article, I haven't felt the need to write anything new, although I was tempted to write an article about the SCG invitational, in which I had two of my car-pooling friends in the top8 (Jono Randle and Tom Buettner), one of which is fairly established at this magic thingy, the other is an up-and-coming potential pro-tour player. 

Talking to players of this caliber day-in and day-out is making the Manaleak group one of the better groups to play magic with in the entire country, which is showing with Manaleak players taking down the majority of the most-recent PTQs. Therefore testing new decks against these players will give you a good indication to the viability of said chosen deck, which leads me on to Modern.

Modern

The Modern format has been thrown a lifesaver, the banning of Bloodbraid Elf has meant that Jund has become alot weaker, although not unplayable as the core of the deck (Bob, Goyf, Shaman and Co.) are still around. The solution many people have sought is to replace BBE with another 4-drop, like Huntmaster, Olivia or Thrun, of which it seems the latter two are favoured. I am still not sure of this approach, the slot which was once occupied by BBE does not have to be taken by a 4-drop (which everyone is focusing on), why not lower the curve and go more aggro? These questions make magic interesting and so the banning gets a big thumbs up from me!

Moving on to what I played at the recent GPT in Worcester, I felt that people will be playing the Thrun/Olivia Jund lists and so decided to play a UW control variant.

I give you, Blinkin' and Slammin'

Creature (16):
3x Kitchen Finks
3x Vendilion Clique
2x Wall of Omens
3x Restoration Angel
2x Snapcaster Mage
2x Sun Titan
1x Phantasmal Image

Instant (14):
1x Sphinx's Revelation
4x Path to Exile
4x Mana Leak
4x Cryptic Command
1x Dismember

Sorcery (2):
2x Supreme Verdict

Enchantment (1):
1x Detention Sphere

Artifact (1):
1x Batterskull

Important Lands (8):
4x Celestial Colonnade
4x Tectonic Edge

The Blinkin' section of the deck is the synergy between Restoration Angel and the other creatures in the deck, whereas the Slammin' section is referring to the power level of cards such as Sun Titan, Sphinx's Revelation and Cryptic Command! The deck tested well at the tournament, finishing 2nd place to Aaron Biddle's Birthing Pod deck, I must admit that I am uneducated in the interactions of the Birthing Pod deck and therefore most likely did not play optimally. However, the matchup felt close and the matchup against Jund seemed heavily in U/W's favour (which is always a good sign). The addition of Phantasmal Image to the deck has really made a difference, if it copies a Kitchen Finks, it can block and then persist back as anything you like! It can be bought back with Sun Titan and also has the added bonus of killing all the legendary creatures making their way into the new Jund lists! Perfect! 

Standard

Standard is looking very diverse at the moment and we seemed to have finally moved away from the mind-boggling boring meta-game of throwing Hellriders at each other! Yay! Of course Hellrider has found a new home in the Naya and RG Aggro decks that have arisen, however this has allowed the emergence of Supreme Verdict control decks (Bant and Esper), which makes UWr less favourable in my eyes. Here is the meta-game analysis from the Pro-Tour:

Jund Aggro
60.00%
100
The Aristocrats
57.83%
83
Human Reanimator
57.02%
121
Jund Midrange
55.60%
241
Bant Control
53.19%
94
Jund
52.73%
110
Gruul Aggro
50.65%
154
UWR
49.82%
275
Naya Humans
46.88%
128
Saito Zoo
46.32%
95
Esper Control
46.29%
229


Make of it as you will, the statistics are here and like many statistics they can be interpreted in many different ways. I was playing Bant before the PT and I will still be on that plan after it, UWR and Jund are very popular decks and I feel that Bant simply crushes these decks. However, there is an argument to play a vast majority of the decks listed here and so it is your personal choice to which you prefer. 

That is all folks! Next Weekend is a Standard GPT, hope to see you all there!

Chris Delo.






       

Monday 18 June 2012

Win - a - Box Monthly Tournament

It has been a while since I have played in a standard tournament which wasn't just an FNM, in that tournament I managed to get to the finals with a U/B control draw-go style deck. However, as many of you guys know, the meta-game has shifted to a point where draw-go is simply a bad place to be right now. People said how Cavern of Souls would not affect control and that it would simply 'adapt', however this adaption of control decks has made delver (the deck CoS was meant to 'nerf') even better placed. I love U/B control however, and so I decided that I would change the draw-go deck into a tap-out U/B control deck to deal with the Delver, Ramp and R/G aggro decks I expected to be prevalent. Here is the list:
Sorcery [3]
3x Black Sun's Zenith                                                  

Enchantment [2]
2x Curse of Death's Hold

Planeswalker [6]
2x Liliana of the Veil
4x Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas

Instant [6]
2x Go for the Throat
1x Doom Blade
3x Mana Leak

Creature [4]
2x Spellskite
1x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Phyrexian Metamorph

Equipment [1]
1x Batterskull

Artifact [13]
4x Ratchet Bomb
3x Ichor Wellspring
3x Pristine Talisman
2x Tumble Magnet
1x Grafdigger's Cage

Land [25]
4x Inkmoth Nexus
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
8x Swamp
4x Island
1x Cavern of Souls

Sideboard [15]
1x Trinket Mage
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Elixir of Immortality
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Karn Liberated
1x Sever the Bloodline
1x Wurmcoil Engine
2x Bloodline Keeper
2x Negate
1x Blue Sun's Zenith
2x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Spellskite


That's right, it is Tezzeret U/B control! The meta-game has shifted in such a way that I felt that Tezzeret was perfectly poised to become a real deck. Theoretically the match up against Delver should improve, with the amount of lifegain and ways to deal with a flipped delver/geist of st. traft. Also the matchup against the aggro decks (humans and R/G) would improve massively, board clearers, lifegain, 5/5 blockers etc. The key cards against WRR are the Tumble Magnets, Spot Removal and Metamorph (Spellskites/Curse are pretty good too!). The theory was all good, however results are not based on theory and so let us go on to talk about how it worked in practice.

On the day of the tournament itself I was suffering badly from hayfever (which I would like to apologize to my opponents for). Therefore throughout the day I was making some mistakes due to a lack of concentration, although I do not feel this contributed too much to the overall impression of the deck.

Round 1: U/B Control
Why hello there old deck I used to play and love. My opponent was Mark Biddle and he was running the draw-go version of U/B control. I must confess that I did not expect this kind of deck in the meta-game and so it was interesting to see it play out. Game 1 was a very long game, however a resolved mimic vat with snapcaster under it, meant that all the card advantaged gained wore me out. Game 2 was won on the back of a Tezzeret 5/5 artifact beat down plan. This left us some 5 minutes to finish Game 3, as soon as time on the round was called I thought about just accepting the game as drawn, but decided I may as well attempt to win. Mark had no counters and no spot removal in hand and lost in 2 turns from the Tezzeret-Inkmoth combination. 2-1 Win.

Round 2: U/W Delver
I was playing against the in-form Zak Dodds, who recently won the avacyn restored Game Day with a similar deck. Game 1 was rather long, which is probably a bad sign for a Delver deck which relies heavily on tempo, I had the mass removal in the form of Black Sun's and Ratchet Bombs and began the beatdown using my bigger threats. Game 2 went down to the wire, I was on 3 and Zak had 2 Restoration Angels out, a Gideon (which I had to attack) and a Tamiyo, which was tapping down a Batterskull. I had a 5/5 and a 1/1 out, with Tezzeret and Liliana in hand. What I should of done was equip the Batterskull to my 5/5, play Liliana, make him sacrifice and beat down with my 9/9 vigilance lifelink. For some reason I forgot to do this (perhaps aforementioned hayfever, or a lack of ability to play the game!) and proceeded to lose the game and therefore drew the round. Disappointing, but the deck had the potential to win and that is the main thing. 1-1 Draw.

Round 3: U/W Delver
Another Delver deck and this time piloted by Tom Buettner, who I always travel with to these tournaments. Like me, he hasn't had much practice in the new metagame as a result of university. Game 1 was early pressure from Tom, putting me down to 6-7 life while countering all my threats. However, my plan against Delver is to force them to counter my threats to allow for the resolution of a board sweeper. With a clear boardstate and my pristine talismans going to work I found myself going back up towards 20 life and resolving threats which were more powerful than the tempo dependent Delver threats. Game 2 simply involved me playing threats which the blue based Delver decks could not interact with - Planeswalkers and Artifacts. 2-0 Win.

Round 4: U/W Delver
You guessed it! Another Delver deck! My opponent being Aaron Biddle, who is currently 3-0 and the only person to do so. I must admit I cannot remember much of the games, I won game 1 by clearing the board and producing threats with Tezzeret. Game 2 was a defeat with uncounterable restoration angels/geists as a result of CoS. Game 3 I managed to win with inkmoth nexus beatdowns. That meant I had got into the top 8 with an ID in Round 5 and the deck had the best record 3-0-2, alongside Tu and Jonno.

Top 8: Rush Infect
Losing the dice roll against Rush Infect is effectively game over for U/B, we need to draw our curse to deal with inkmoths and other answers to deal with the other threats. A Tezzeret deck packing lots of lifegain and a sideboard dedicated against the major decks didn't really stand much of a chance against this unexpected deck. I lost 2-1.

Although I only finished in the 5th-8th bracket I was happy with the performance of the deck against Delver, which takes up a huge part of the meta. In testing the deck performs well against R/G variants and Humans, however more testing against Zombies and Pod is needed. In testing the best cards in the deck are Ratchet Bomb and the centre piece card Tezzeret. U/B originally had a huge problem dealing with swords, which both of these cards can answer, also it is important to note that Ratchet Bomb can effectively be a 2 mana board sweeper against delver. 

I would highly recommend this deck to any control player who feels that draw-go just isn't performing and to anyone who just wants to play with their unused playset of Tezzerets!  

Thanks for reading,
Chris Delo
    



Wednesday 11 April 2012

GPT Manchester

Manchester GPT Tournament Review

2 hours sleep, no playtesting, and a bad experience from GPT Cardiff was not the best preparation for the tournament at hand. The GPT at Cardiff did however, teach me a valuable lesson. Never pick up a deck the day before a tournament! That day I had decided that Esper Control was the deck I should be playing and with little to no experience with the deck, I slumped to a 2-3 finish. 


Needless to say I wasn't going to make that mistake again, so I sleeved up the deck I feel most comfortable playing, U/B control. The list is as follows:


Creatures (4):
2 Consecrated Sphinx
2 Snapcaster Mage

Planeswalkers (2):
1 Karn Liberated
1 Liliana of the Veil

Other Spells (28):
2 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Blue Sun's Zenith
2 Curse of Death's Hold
2 Dissipate
1 Doom Blade
3 Forbidden Alchemy
2 Go for the Throat
4 Mana Leak
1 Ponder
2 Pristine Talisman
2 Ratchet Bomb
4 Think Twice
1 Tragic Slip
1 Tribute to Hunger

Lands (26):
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacomb
8 Island
4 Nephalia Drownyard
6 Swamp

Sideboard (15):
1 Batterskull
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Dissipate
2 Jace, Memory Adept
1 Liliana of the Veil
2 Negate
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Sever the Bloodline
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Tragic Slip
1 Tribute to Hunger



If anyone was keeping track of GP Salt Lake City, they would notice that this list is similar to that of Patrick Chaplin's U/B control deck. However, I felt that Karn Liberated was too powerful to leave out of the mainboard, I figured a resolved Karn would just win in the control mirror and although it is sub-par against aggro, at least I have a reasonable chance of getting games 2 and 3 completed against them. The most deceptively powerful cards in the deck are that of Pristine Talisman and Nephalia Drownyard. The life gain from the talisman often causes aggro and delver players to over commit to the board, allowing for a Ratchet Bomb or Black Sun's Zenith sweeper, also the ramp is relevant in reaching 7 mana for Karn and Forbidden Alchemy flashback mana turn 6. Nephalia Drownyard is definitely a 4-of in any U/B list, it allows us to sit back and mill and much like the talisman it forces our opponent to run into our counter-magic and sweepers. 

Round 1: Bye. Not much else to say apart from I get lucky with my byes.

Round 2: I was paired up against Thanh running a G/W human deck, who I recommended to put Thalia's and Grand Abolishers in the side which wreck U/B if not dealt with. 

Game 1: I chose to play and was met with a Champion turn 1 with an attempted Gather the Townsfolk turn 2, which was hastily manaleaked. I ended up tapping out turn 5 for a Curse of Death's Hold, which I knew shut down half of the G/W list and with a BSZ in hand I did not fear a resolved Mirran Crusader or Hero of Bladehold. Two Sword of War and Peace were resolved instead, however I ended up resolving a Consecrated Sphinx and riding it home. 

Game2: In came the Batterskull, Liliana of the Veil, Tribute to Hunger and the extra Curse. This game went the same way as the first, I managed to double Curse my opponent and deal with anything that manages to survive. I began beating down with a Batterskull and the game ended with me at over 40 life thanks to the Batterskull and Pristine Talisman package.

Round 3: I was 2-0 and knew a win here would allow me to double ID into the top 8. My opponent was Ryan Talbot piloting a U/B zombie deck, I hadn't had much practice against this matchup (not any) and really didn't know how the games would play out.

Game 1: I was met with a fast start by my opponent with Grave Crawler into Messenger, at this point I really wish I took a mulligan with a Doom Blade in hand and a double Phantasmal Image on the Messenger next turn led to me scooping up and moving on to Game 2.

Game 2: Consecrated Sphinx seemed bad against a deck running so much removal and were removed for Game 2, in came the Batterskull, Curse, 2 Jaces, 2 Spellbombs, Sever the Bloodline and the Surgical Extraction. This game went a little better, manaleaking the Messenger and extracting them all from the deck allowed me to have some breathing space, especially as I saw a hand that was focusing on copying it. I resolved a Curse followed by a Jace and proceeded to mill my opponent out without worrying about the reanimating Gravecrawlers. 

Game 3: I felt that Game 2 went well and so kept it as it was, after taking a mulligan to 6 I felt my hand was reasonable enough to keep, it had counter magic and removal. However, my opponent played Distress turn 2! Removing my countermagic and then went to town with the Messengers and Images, I did not last long.


Round 4: I wished my opponent well in the top 8 and he said he would see me there. It was a pleasure playing against Ryan and the game needs more players who are gracious in both winning and defeat. Top guy. I knew I had to win this next round to make it to the top 8.


Game 1: I must confess I cannot remember much about the first game, only me seeing the darkslick shores turn 1 by my opponent and knowing he was either U/B control or Zombies. It turned out he was playing Zombies, I managed to counter all his threats and proceeded to mill him out. We then both confessed who we lost to last round, me stating it was Zombies and him losing out to U/B control, kind of ironic huh?

Game 2: I felt that my sideboarding plan was good enough in the previous round and so stuck with that. My opponent resolved Liliana of the Veil, which was fine as I had a curse on him and a resolved Jace, Memory Adept. I began the milling processes and my opponent ultimated Liliana, I kept the Jace, sacking the Batterskull I had in play. Two more turns and my opponent scooped, knowing I had the mill out next turn.

Round 5: ID. Top 8 finish was achieved and I decided to take some time out to relax and prepare. I knew who got into the top 8 and I did not fear any matchup, but I preferred to be paired up against another control deck.


Top 8: The top 8 had some interesting matches, Esper vs Wolf Run, Tezzeret vs 5-Colour Control, Grixis vs Delver and U/B control vs Zombies. As you might have guessed from this I was paired up against Ryan who said he would see me in the top 8.


Game 1: It was effectively the same story as when we met in the swiss, although this time I mulliganed a sub-par hand to find another sub-par six, I hoped I could draw out of it with Forbidden Alchemy, but it wasn't to be and I ended up scooping relatively quickly. At this moment I felt like it wasn't going to be my day and that winning the next two games would prove difficult.

Game 2: The same sideboard plans were introduced as before and I had counter-magic in hand and a Curse, which was an auto keep for me in this matchup. Although I was met with a Gravecrawler turn 1, I had the answers for everything being played and with a reolved Curse and Jace, it was a short matter of time before my opponent was milled out.

Game 3: The previous games had gone exactly the same way as they had done in the swiss, so I knew I could not keep a sub-par hand again, I mulliganed down to 6 on the draw and had 2 Mana Leaks, 2 land, 1 Curse and a Snapcaster Mage. For me this was the perfect hand, seeing as Geralf's Messenger is the card we most fear and we can afford to take some early beats. As it happened my opponent kept a rather dodgy hand, being stuck on 2 lands with no early plays (one can only suspect Images and Messengers were in hand). It allowed me to set up a board position, playing Curse into Jace and at this point I could feel the top 4 approaching. Ryan scooped up and I took a sigh of relief as I overcame a deck that caused my only defeat during the swiss.

Top 4: The decks remaining were Wolf Run, Delver, Tezzeret and U/B control. At this point I really wanted the Wolf Run matchup as I felt this was heavily in U/B's favour. The deck I really didn't want to play was the Delver deck piloted by Tom Rickarby, who is one of the better players at Worcester. 


Game 1: I won the dice roll and was on the play, turn one Delver by my opponent was met by a Doom Blade (it is fine to do this as Delver decks have little in terms of a turn 2 play). Lingering Souls by my opponent resolved, however a Curse of Death's Hold crippled the Delver deck, a second Curse meant the only live card in the deck was a Dungeon Geist and when this was dealt with my opponent scooped after a mill out.


Game 2: In came the extra Curse, Black Sun's and 2 Jace's. It is important to remove the Sphinxs in this matchup as well as the Liliana and Tribute. Although, if you are playing the U/W version of Delver running Geist of Saint Traft, I would keep the Liliana and Tribute in. I kept an OK hand and dealt with the turn 2 Delver from the turn 1 Ponder. My opponent fell to 9 from a lot of probes and me down 6, but a Black Sun's Zenith managed to reset the board. Snapcaster Mage flashing back Dissipate countered the next play and I began the beats putting my opponent down to 5. However, Lingering Souls ruined the plan of Snapcaster beats and I was overwhelmed by Spirit tokens.


Game 3: The penultimate game was met with a good opening 7 and being on the play meant a lot in this match I felt. I didn't see a Delver this game so I presume they must of gotten taken out (I might be wrong). I must admit I cannot remember much from this game, I remember landing a Jace with a Curse out and then proceeded to win on the mill out. I was in the final.


Final: Me and Manaleak regular Zak Dodds were in the final, I wasn't going to the GP in Manchester and so scooped it up to allow Zak the 3 byes for tournament. However we thought we would play out the final game for the unofficial winner of the tournament and the famous 'tick on the board'. I won both games pretty comfortably but that was mostly due to Zak keeping sub-par hands, which he wouldn't have if he was playing for the 3 byes. 


The U/B decklist is extremely strong against most matchups and including the Sunday Win-a-Box tournament I managed a 10-3-1 record for the weekend (2 of those defeats being to U/B Zombies). Although I still feel that Delver is the most powerful deck currently in the format, U/B control is still very competitive and I would recommend the decklist to anyone. From the weekend I would be inclined to include the Batterskull in the main and perhaps even go as far as to include the 2 Jace, Memory Adept over the Consecrated Sphinx (which was underwhelming all tournament).

Hope you guys enjoyed the read!

Chris Delo