MTG Catalyst

Life is life, and sometimes you don’t get to play cards. One of the big issues with trying to go infinite in a format where the metagame is always changing is that you have to generally do it rather quickly. Single Set Block for instance is an old standby, but it doesn’t start up again until September and if you don’t get in 6-10 daily events a week you have a hard time generating enough tickets to update your deck when the new set rolls. Momir fortunately doesn’t change which makes it a lot better than Pauper or Block in that regard.

Last week I worked 3 days, went to Walt Disney World for two days to celebrate my son’s birthday and then came back to a pile of work topped off by another birthday party. I played zero MTG during that time. I’m getting back after it with a fresh set of hours. This update is actually a couple of weeks smashed together.

Since I have plenty of tickets for now I’m still hoarding GTC Boosters hoping they will go back up. They got briefly over three this week but then a deluge of players cashed them in and they are back to 2.97 as I write this.

I started the week with a quick trade.

-1 Foil Liliana of the Dark Realms
+14 Tickets

I really had to hunt for a bot to squeeze out that extra ticket. This card really doesn’t have a future economically since she’s either unplayable to her more attractive younger sister (Liliana of the Veil) and will rotate at the same time or more likely bound for a reprint in which case her price drops 30-50% on the spot.

My matches this week were interesting.

Momir Basic Daily Event 4/28/2013
2-2
-6 Tix

My third round opponent made a play mistake and still managed to get a lucky draw to keep me out of the packs. He was on 1 life, had a Roil Elemental while I had Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed and a Liege of the Pit. He took the Liege and with no way to stop the horse master made an 8 drop and got Avatar of Slaughter. A full strike with all his creatures would have left me at 12, but with the double strike they dropped me to -2 and I lost the third game.

Momir Basic Daily Event 5/6/2013
1-2
-6 Tix

I lost the first round of this tournament in a very long series. The first game we played I got swamped by card advantage. The second game I got lucky draws but the third game required thinking. My opponent had Duskmantle Seer which was giving us both cards. I had an active Masticore which I would have normally thought about ditching but I didn’t have an answer to the seer yet and I was able to hold him at bay. His 6 drop was Dread which is amazing in this format. Now I was having to keep regeneration mana up but not make drops because I had no other way to block Dread. Eventually with 8 mana open he swung into me with both the Seer and Dread. I had to make a choice to regenerate and kill dread or kill the seer. Not wanting to give him another smash to my face I killed the Seer then failed to draw an answer. Had I left it alone his other creatures could easily have swamped me the next turn due to my feeble board.

I lost the third round of this tournament to Bringer of the Red Dawn. Apparently there are other decent 9 drops than Blazing Archon. My opponent had 2 of them while I had Akron Legionnaire. Those are the breaks.

M13 Draft 5/8/2013
0-1
+1 Glacial Fortress
+1 Rootbound Crag

I bought a pre-release token thinking I was going to get to play in the Dragon’s Maze Prerelease but it hadn’t started, so I threw down 3 packs and decided to M13 draft. Unfortunately the client was extremely buggy and I didn’t even get my first two draft picks. The client crashed again when I submitted my deck and I was forced to enter the tournament with my entire card pool as my deck. Needless to say I won no packs and didn’t really even want to try. WotC refunded my two tickets and 3 packs for this draft.

DGM Pre-Release 5/12/2013
0-1
+1 Boros Reckoner
+1 Promo Maze’s End

I had a very similar challenge with this pre-release as I did with my M13 draft. My entire pool was placed in my collection. Even with three minutes to sideboard I was unable to pull over 100 cards out of my deck.  I dropped out of this tournament as well and filed for compensation.

DGM Pre-Release 5/13/2013
0-3
+1 Trostani, Selesnia’s Voice
+1 Ruric Thar, The Unbowed
+1 Aetherling
+1 Promo Maze’s End
-20 Tickets

I did have to pay $5 to enter this tournament since there was no way to buy the untradable guild mark with tickets. Pre-releases are usually bad EV unless you pull a great Mythic or something. Because the pre-releases ended on Monday 5/13 I ended up playing this tournament at 12:30 AM which was not exactly when I wanted to play. I played a fat filled green based Gruul deck with a solid splash of white for stall and mitigation abilities  My thought was if I could get to turn 4 or so I could take over the game with huge creatures.

My first match seemed to make me think this was a great strategy as my opponent who was playing a fast boros deck got me to about 14 life before I started dumping huge creatures on him. I was playing about 6 sources of removal including “fight” cards like Pit Fight and situational cards like Gruul Charm. My second two games of match one resulted in me drawing a bunch of land and no creatures. I only played 17 lands despite my huge curve. I did play a cluestone and a Gatecreeper Vine for ramp, but not having lands wasn’t an issue. My opponent was able to clear out my early creatures and since I was drawing nothing but lands, seal me up with massive beats from his.

This format is a lot faster than I expected. My early game cards in this pool weren’t nearly as strong as the cards in my first pool. One game I thought I had locked down ended up blown out by an overloaded Mizzium Mortars. My overall game record for the tournament was 2-6 which is pretty awful. I haven’t been shut out in a long time. It doesn’t help that Maze’s End is one of the worst promos in a while.

Momir Basic Daily Event 5/13/2013
3-1
-6 Tix
+6 Gatecrash Booster

In the third game of match 4 I had Master of the Wild Hunt down. To keep his removal ability relevant I played resource denial with Shadow Rats. Out of all the matchups I’m pretty sure I won this match because I followed the Basic Strategy. While my opponent frantically made drops, I ramped back to 8 at the expense of my board. He had a Simic Sky Swallower that I couldn’t wipe away with Wolves but my 8 drops were able to pressure him into blocking. Once I had him on the defensive he couldn’t afford to ramp and I put him away with Devouring Strossus  who seems to like the taste of wolf very much.

I ran to the bots to unload some of my draft cards.

-1 Boros Reckoner
-1 Aetherling
-1 Gaze of Granite
+7 Tix

Momir Basic Daily Event 5/14/2013
1-2
-6 Tix

My first round opponent MaxKombo7 was super cool. We played two of the closest games of Momir Vig I have played yet. There is a good chance I lost game two because I took too much damage from Mirran Crusader early on. My rules say don’t trade potentially useful creatures. I certainly would call Brian Stoutarm a useful creature.  Unfortunately I was taking 4 damage a round because every card I drew was black. I stopped the bleeding at 8 life.

All of my games in this tournament were very close and required very tight play. If they show up in replay I plan to record a couple of them.

Here is my collection value as of 5/15/2013

Trade Stock	Value	Total
54 Event Tickets	1	54
4 M13 Booster	2.64	10
35 Gatecrash Booster	2.68	94
4 Set(5) RTR Shocks	13.9	56
4 Set(5) SoM Fastlands	2.42	10
4 Promo Wurmcoil Engine	2.6	10
1 Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice	3	3
Misc Non-Staples (Mythics/Rares)		2
Total		239

Non-Trade Staples	Value
1 Pauper Goblin Deck	16
1 Pauper Mono Blue Control Deck	56
1 Momir Vig Avatar	10
1 Playset of M11 Lands	20
Total	102

For those of you following along my starting value was 256 Tix*. Last post’s value was 338 Tix. Today’s Value is 341 Tix.

I adjusted my starting value up by 5 tix to account for the $5 I added to the client to play in the Pre-release. Overall these last two weeks, even scrubbing out of the pre-release I gained objects but my collection value suffered about 20 tickets due to a loss in value of shock lands and a nose dive in pack prices. Time will tell us if holding those packs was a good idea or not.

More Guidelines for Momir Basic

After basically a break even week last week I decided to give it another week to see if I could get the EV in my favor. I’ll post the results, but I wanted to dive right into some other things I’ve learned after grinding about 30 games last week. These aren’t basic rules like before, but they certainly make sense to me as guidelines.

1. Make a 2 Drop

On the play many players skip drops 1 and 2, which is ok, but the number of 2 drops with a game winning ability is really high. Some of the abilities are simple like Accorder Paladin grant a little extra damage. Some like Dauthi Slayer require removal and still others can win them game on their own. Here is a sample of the most powerful 2-drops.
You’ll notice that most of these cards draw extra cards, extra lands, or make multiple mana. Being able to make 4 extra mana means you can advance quicker and make 12 drops rather than 8 drops. While three drops might seem just as interesting, none of the two drops can actually kill you. Countryside Crusher might as well be Phage the Untouchable. He’ll be huge for one turn if you can connect. There are also 300 more 3 drops than 2 drops making good cards like Dawnglare Invoker harder to find.

2. Unless your win is certain or you need to bluff combat tricks, play 8 drop creatures before attacking.

I ran an analysis of all the 8+ drops that are beneficial to play before combat and the 8+ drops that would hinder combat. I’ve summarized them below:

Of these only Craterhoof Behemoth will likely win the game outright, but being able to clear a blocker or give your attackers +2/+2 is nothing to sneeze at. At 9 only Spirit of the Night has haste and none of the other >8 drops matter to the immediate game state.

There are some 8 drops that could negatively impact your current attack phase. They are pictured below:

None of the 9+ drops have any detrimental effects to the game state.

3. Unless you need a flying blocker, 12 is the best use of “unlimited” mana.

15 mana gives you a 50/50 chance of a big flyer if that’s standing between you and death, but depending on the size you might as easily be served by one of the 8 drops above. With a stalled board state the best creatures are at 12.

Attacking with It that Betrays will force a sacrifice of either potentially valuable creatures, or lands. If they choose to sacrifice lands they end up in your pile making your mana all that much more effective. Blightsteel Colossus is what you are after. You can have as many as you can find and they are indestructible. The poison component forces the opponent to block with a lot of bodies giving you inevitability.

If you can’t get to 12 you can consider 11.

4. There is only 1 good 9 drop.

Unless Blazing Archon is your only hope (Opponent has Blightsteel or Emrakul) I would avoid 9 drops like the plague.

5. Be ready to pay the upkeep on 10 drops.

Playing for 10 is a bet that generally should only be done when you are ahead or need to break a stalemate but can’t get to 12. Deep Sea Kraken, Dragon Tyrant, and Progenitus can win you the game very quickly. About 4 of the options aren’t worth the 10 mana and the others like Jin-Gitaxias, core Augur and Spawnsire of Ulamog can help you ramp further. 10 Drops are an option if 11 or 12 isn’t available and the board is clear. Only Dragon Tyrant flys and it comes with a stiff RRRR upkeep. Normally I don’t advance to 10 unless I have four Mountains and 2 Forests available. If I do get Krosan Cloudscraper I normally will pay the upkeep once and then throw him at my opponent to try to whittle down his board.

Updates to Going Infinite

I won’t have much time to play the next two weekends, so I tried to get some games in.

Momir Basic Daily Event 4/7/2013
4-0
-6 Tix
+11 Packs of Gatecrash

M13 Sealed Deck Daily Event 4/9/2013
2-2
-10 Tix
+1 Serra Avatar
+1 Rancor (Foil)

Momir Basic Daily Event 4/9/2013
3-1
-6 Tix
+6 Packs of Gatecrash

I got seriously tilted in Match 1 Game 2 when my chair broke. I had a pile of good stuff but just couldn’t quite get there. Then game 3 I made a bunch of misplays. I missed 2 card draws off a creature, could have stalled the ground for a while, threw away a forest that I needed et. Sisters of Stone Death is tricky. Read it a few times if you aren’t used to playing with it.

I watched my opponents make mistakes in this tournament too. One opponent had a Platinum Emperion down but I had a sizeable blocker. He kept making 8 drops while I ramped to 12 trying to outrace me as I paid the upkeep on Arcades Sabboth. He landed Denizen of the Deep and I dropped him in 2 turns.  He could have gone to 10 and likely broken the stalemate fairly easily.

After I got my head back in the game this was one of the more fun tournament’s I’ve done. It’s not every day you can say you won a game on the back of Nut Collector.

M13 8 Man Swiss Draft
2-1
-1 M13 Packs
-2 Tix
+1 Rootbound Crag
+1 Liliana of the Dark Realms (Foil)

I understand that limited events aren’t exactly the ticket to infinite, but I don’t have another constructed set and this is the most QP’s in one season I’ve had in awhile. Even with bad EV, occasionally you get lucky and pull 15 ticket cards.

Join me in about a week when I post more results and briefly discuss Gatecrash pack prices.

I watch a lot of Call of Duty gameplay on YouTube. For those of you who watch streams or YouTube you may only watch pro’s, or you may watch good players who aren’t quite as good as pro’s but who can identify their mistakes. I’d consider myself in the second category. I’m not a pro MTG player, but I know that if you are less experienced or about the same skill level as me, you can learn just as fast from my mistakes as you can from your own.

Tournament 1:
1-2
No Noticeable Mistakes

Tournament 2:
0-2
Was unable to reconnect to the client for 6 min. Compensated 6 tix.

Tournament 3:
2-2
Heartbreaker! I made a small mistake in round 3, but I don’t remember what it was. It may or may not have mattered to the results. In game 4 I won the first one quickly and had a huge board advantage in game two but no flyers. My opponent flipped Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and stalled me while beating for 10 a turn. I had 16 mana available and tried 3 turns to get Emrakul and ended up with Autochthon Wurm three times. I died. The game took 15 minutes so I began game 3 with just under four minutes on my clock. I had 12 points of damage in the air that was unblocked but only 3 seconds to get it off. The game didn’t enter the attack phase quick enough and I died. I need to play faster.

Tournament 4:
3-1
I played a couple games of this tournament with F8 enabled. I missed several attack phases due to being used to hitting F6 to advance from Main to Attack. It did speed up my game, so I may practice and use it more in the future.
I made a play mistake in round 1 of this tournament. I had a two land advantage on my opponent and started making 10 drops. I got Dragon Tyrant and would easily have killed him if I had kept 4 mountains. I run a 15 Mountain deck and had the ability to search two lands. Making them both mountains would have not cost me this match. You have to know the 8+ Drops in the format.

He made a play mistake in game 2 by not using a ETB ability to kill of Skarrg Guildmage which allowed me to trample over for the win. In game three he got a lucky Reaper from the Abyss and several creatures that could sacrifice themselves, however had I had my four mountains in game 1 we would not have even been in game 3.
I lost one game in my 4th match to Azorius Guildmage. I have gotten this card before and had no idea how strong it is, so I know that some of you may not either. The Momir Vig Avatar ability is an Activated Ability and thus can be countered by Azorius Guildmage. Since you can only activate Momir once each turn unless you have a way to kill it, you will lose (or if you get the guildmage, win).

Tournament 5:
2-2
I made a mistake in round two in this tournament by not noticing that my opponent had gone up a land on our very defensive board state. I started dropping lands but he got to 12 and got Blightsteel Colossus. I honestly think he might be better than shooting for Emrakul on 15 depending on the board state because he ignores life totals. I scooped. My opponent basically told me that I could have had 2 more turns to land Trench Gorger, Hoverguard Sweepers or Stormtide Leviathan.

Tournament 6:
3-1
Since it had the exact same payout as a Momir Daily I actually played in the Festival of Old Limited Sealed AKA: FOOLS.
I played a slow grind G/b deck with a bunch of instant spells like Beast Attack and Elephant Ambush. The game I lost was to a blistering fast White/Red Deck with a lot of flyers.

So Monday to Monday I’m up 12 packs at a total cost of 30 tix. Gatecrash packs are selling at an all time low right now which I’m guessing has to do with the value of the cards being low and the new $25 redemption fee. The current value of those packs is only 34 tix.

I did a M13 draft with some leftover packs and won 2 packs but grabbed no cards of value. I traded a Mutilate and a M13 Buddy Land I drafted for another pack of M13 but I don’t see myself playing a lot of draft unless the pack values in GTC never recover. I’ve got 6 tix left so normally I would cash in some packs, but since the value is quite low, I sold all of my ISD Block Lands for 95 tix. These are at or close to their peak value and will fall rapidly when they start to rotate just like the SoM block lands did. It’s my experience that you have to act a bit preemptively to get as much value as you can on MTGO. It might take weeks for something to crash in paper, but MTGO moves very quickly. I also noticed that the buy/sell spread on those SoM lands is really low, so I took a 10 ticket hit on those just by buying them.

Here is my collection value as of 4/2/2013

Trade Stock	Value	Total
101 Event Tickets	1	101
3 M13 Booster	3.12	10
12 Gatecrash Booster	2.92	35
4 Set(5) RTR Shocks	16.95	68
4 Set(5) SoM Fastlands	2.49	10
4 Promo Wurmcoil Engine	3	12
Misc Non-Staples (Mythics/Rares)		0
Total		236

Non-Trade Staples	Value
1 Pauper Goblin Deck	16
1 Pauper Mono Blue Control Deck	56
1 Momir Vig Avatar	10
1 Playset of M11 Lands	20
Total	102

For those of you following along my starting value was 251 Tix. Last post’s value was 270 Tix. Today’s Value is 338 Tix.

I’m not sure if it’s because of recent discussions or not, but two of the most searched terms on my blog are about the Momir Basic format. Despite WotC halving the number of daily events, the format is rather popular and I find myself playing it a lot more than when I was first introduced to it 18 months ago.

In my previous post on Momir Basic I talked about the EV of 2 man queues which is actually negative right now. (4 Tickets in 3 Tickets out). I stated that I didn’t really have enough tickets to “learn the format”. Believe it or not, people do play Momir Basic for fun and due to time constraints and playing in the open beta, I’ve actually played a lot of it over the past three months.

Recently Brandon Large a MTGO grinder and writer for StarCityGames.com wrote a beginners guide to going infinite in which he said the ultimate budget play is to play Momir Basic daily events and count on play skill and the overall EV of the event to eventually overcome the randomness. Basically as long as you don’t punt games away by making bad plays you should be able to 3-1 at least one in three events, hopefully more.

I was rather skeptical of his advice. There are pro’s and cons to this method but after playing in as many Momir events as I could this week, I think this is actually a better method than grinding Pauper. Pauper has a huge barrier to entry in the skill department. You need to know how about 6-8 different decks work and the nuances of each. To play Momir well you need to be good at evaluating an open board state and know some basic strategy. People who’s ultimate goal is to play limited should enjoy Momir a lot more than Pauper.

The downside is that there are only 10 or 11 Momir Basic daily events per week. I was actually only able to play in four of them and one of those involved me staying up until 3:00 am and then going to work tired. If you can play in four to six events per week and net out in more than one of them you should be able to increase your tickets by 20-40 per week. Unless you win right away you need a bank of about 24 tickets to play the average. You may hit a bad streak and be down 30-36 tickets but as long as the only reason you are losing is to randomness the EV should come back to you.

Like many people who play Magic: the Gathering I enjoy other games and card games. I also enjoy movies about card games like Rounders and 21. I watched 21 the other night and I think they said “Basic Strategy” about 21 times during the movie. It got me thinking that if you are taking out the variance of Momir Basic by playing the odds alone there should be some basic strategies to Momir Basic that could give a beginner rules to improve his or her play without having to play twenty or thirty games to figure them out. Without further ado I present the_cardfather’s Basic Strategy to Momir Basic.

Momir Basic Strategy

1) Don’t Miss Land Drops

Until you hit 8 lands unless you are in dire straights you shouldn’t miss any land drops. The only cards I can think of that I would cough up lands to with CMC under 8 are creatures that would keep me in the game if I didn’t discard. Magus of the Disk would be one example.

2) Play Defensive

This doesn’t mean don’t try to win, but it does mean don’t push if you don’t have to. Do you have a creature that could win the game in a few turns by just attacking? If you turn over a creature such as Denizen of the Deep you ruin your chance. In many cases it’s better to see if your opponent

3) Don’t Sacrifice Potentially Useful Creatures

Do you have a creature that could give one of your other creatures flying? What if it costs 5 to activate? Surely you could stop an early 4-5 points of damage? But what if late in the game you get something like Ghoultree. Perhaps at that point adding to the board state isn’t as important as playing with what you have. Remember play defensive.

4) Manage the Clock

Board states in Momir Basic tend to get clogged up. Often this causes people to not attack and topdeck until someone draws a trump card (like Craterhoof Behemoth). Analyze the board when you don’t have priority. Read cards you don’t recognize on your opponent’s turn when they are tapping for Momir, when they are declaring attacks et. Use shortcuts. I’ll put the important ones here as a refresher.

4) Know the high casting cost creatures

You need to know what to shoot for if you get extra mana. I plan to work on these guidelines and publish more, but in a nutshell this is what you need to know.

Not counting gold bordered cards which are mostly from recent printings so range from decent to good cards like Godsire, there are 105 creatures with 8 casting cost. Some of them like Cognivore are duds, but there are plenty of Bogardan Hellkite and Griselbrand out there.

There are 30 creatures with a CMC of 9. Only 2 of the 30 are worth having over an 8 drop. They are Blazing Archon and Inkwell Leviathan. Unless Blazing Archon is the only thing that will save you, don’t spend mana on 9.

There are 15 creatures with a CMC of 10. One is dead, four are bad, and 6 are broken. You’ve got a 50% chance of getting something good. I will normally take my chances on 10.

There are 7 creatures with CMC of 11. 7 of them are good, 2 are bad. Eleven is one of my favorite dumps for extra mana if I’m not trying for Emrakul.

There are 3 creatures with CMC of 12. Two are good and 1 is Meh. There are 0 creatures with CMC of 13 or 14, and there are two with CMC of 15. Other than Trench Gorger, I can’t think of a card I’d rather have to go for a finish than Emrakul, the aeons Torn. However just understand that it isn’t guaranteed. Just tonight I should have had an easy finish but landed 3 Autochthon Wurms. Welcome to Momir.

6) Don’t Lose your Cool to Randomness

The format is very luck based. You are here to play the odds, so don’t get mad when you have a 4-0 in the bag and the turn before you win your opponent drops Gisela, Blade of Goldnight and ruins your day. For every time that happens, your opponent will pull Phage the Untouchable right when he was about to knock you out of the money. It’s fun to win packs, but you are simply playing the house.

Edit: This article was accidentally published early. If you see this, you have the latest version.

As I’m not actively grinding PTQ’s this season I made a decision to sell the ZEN Fetchlands I’ve been hanging onto arbitrarily. I wasn’t sure if I was going to share this or not, but based on this graph, I think those of you who have subscribed would like to know.

I got just over 152 tix for them selling to a combination of bots and humans. I did make some purchases such as a full set of Return to Ravnica shocks (64 tix) and Scars of Mirrodin Fastlands (14 tix). This is still a great time to pick up Scars of Mirrodin block cards that you need for future decks. I nearly bought a Modern Robots deck while I was looking around.

I expect Fetchlands to come back to earth after the Modern PTQ season subsides. I don’t expect them as low as they were before but between 4 and 6 tix each seems very reasonable. I do plan to have bought them back before Modern Masters hits MTGO.

For those keeping track:
-20 Fetch Lands
+20 Shock Lands
+20 Fast Lands
+74 Tickets

It is worth noting that these shock lands will be in Dragon’s Maze too so their price could go down a little. However by this time next year I expect the more played lands to be about double their current value. Whether or not I’m wanting to sell will depend on what I’m playing at that time.

I want to apologize for not posting more updates. My schedule has precluded me from even participating in RtR Block Constructed this year. I log on when I can for Momir Basic, Pauper practice and the occasional Sealed Deck, but right now I’m spending more time following the game than actually playing it, which is borderline depressing.

Does anyone ever feel like this guy?

There are a lot of reasons you can lose a game of magic. Sometimes you get outplayed. Sometimes your opponents deck is designed to exploit the weaknesses of your deck and you get a bad match-up. Sometimes you get mana screwed. All of these factors are a part of variance.

One of the goals of every tournament magic player is to reduce variance as much as possible. A good example is playing four of a card. The more chances you have to draw a creature or an effect the better your chances are that you can count on it. It includes not taking unnecessary risk so that you don’t get blown out by a Giant Growth or stacking spells to anticipate a counter. Taking a mulligan is an important way to reduce variance.

My third M13 release draft started out with nearly zero color commitment. I finally landed some decent black creatures so I hung out there for a while, but got cut off in pack two.

I was in the middle of reading a forum thread on mill when I get passed two Mind Sculpt. I took a look at my deck and decided it wasn’t going anywhere via conventional means so I decided to draft mill. I only got one Mind Sculpt but I did get three Vedalken Entrancer.

The deck I ended up with is below:

The deck has the basic plan of stall the board and then win either by evasive creatures or mill. While I would have loved to have had a Murder the Encrusts should help keep problematic creatures at bay. (For some reason I thought this had a pacifism effect as well, which it does not. That caused a play mistake in one game, but it turned out not to matter.)

Round 1

My opponent opens up with a lot of card draw but I manage to stall him out. Mind Sculpt took him down to 15 cards and a Vedalken Entrancer did the rest. Having been on both sides of this card, I just want to state how easy it is to steal games, especially against green decks using Elvish Visionary and cards like Farseek. The 4 toughness is a serious bonus which makes the card playable on its own. Game two I got a three for one on my opponent with an early Mutilate and proceed to use an exalted Harbor Bandit to smash face.

Round 2

I start this hand with what looks like an incredible grip. Two Entrancer, Mutilate, Encrust and a good spread of lands. My opponent is playing green ramp and lands an early Acidic Slime on my island. I’ve already drawn a replacement, but my hand is full of four casting cost things. We play 6-8 more turns before he is able to finish me off and I never see a 4th land.

Game two he ramps himself nearly to oblivion and while I get a 4th land, I don’t see any of my mill cards or a 5th land to cast the two Essence Drain sitting in my hand. While I’m a bit upset that the deck didn’t come out, and I have no idea what I would have cut for an 18th land (Mind Sculpt most likely), I chalk this one up to variance. An average player would complain about how mana screw cost him a 3-0 draft. A better player drafts a 3-0 deck every time and understands variance happens. When people talk about the best magic players, Finkel, Budde, Kibler, they talk about how consistent these guys are at winning. Some of it is the amount of tournaments they play, but when you constantly have yourself in qualification, your odds go up.

Round 3

I’m sorry to say that this round wasn’t much better. My opener was a bunch of blue cards and two swamps. I thought about it for a bit and threw it back. My six wasn’t much better. I had a Swamp, an Island an Unsummon, Ravenous Rats, Vedalken Entrancer and a Wind Drake.

My opponent’s second turn Ravenous Rats took the Unsummon and, behind on card advantage, I lost tempo as well to a Servant of Nefarox. I stabilized at 3 life, but then my opponent dropped a Mindclaw Shaman. I conceded, not wanting him to see the Essence Drain sitting in my hand.

Disappointed, I shuffled up for game two. Game two I opened up a 5 land hand that I rightfully should have mulliganed. I was scared of variance and didn’t really have answers when my opponent dropped a Liliana of the Dark Realms. I congratulated him on his “free draft” and realized I didn’t really have an answer in my deck. I lost three creatures to her [-3] ability before I was finally able to finish her off with Essence Drain. At that point it was too late. She had managed to get a Liliana’s Shade down which I could answer with Encrust but only after taking nine damage. I could have cast Essence Drain on the shade, but then I would be putting any potential blockers in harms way and my opponent had a Bloodthrone Vampire that could have prevented me from gaining life. I got Encrust down on the shade, but my opponent dropped a couple of midrange green creatures he was holding. Having no further answers I scooped.

The Plan from Here

While this won’t be my last M13 draft, I need to concentrate on growing my packs, which right now means its back to pauper. Mono Blue is doing well right now, but I haven’t played many mirror matches. I’ll be spending the next week or so practicing, and depending on my confidence I should be able to get some games in.

Return to Ravnica should be online in the middle of October. Realistically, I need to earn about 50 tickets to build a budget block deck. Ideally, I’d like even more to avoid having a budget concern, but I’ll cross that bridge when the set is out.

While the value of M13 packs eventually will go lower, they should recover slightly. I’m going to base this math estimate on a price of 3 tickets each.

Two Man Queues require a match win percentage of 2/3 (66.67%) to break even. That’s a pretty tall order right now, so unless I get into some kind of groove I’ll mostly use them for testing.

Daily Events require a 3-1 record 33% of the time to break even, so they are by far the best EV. Pray that my schedule permits the three hour blocks it takes to play on a regular basis.

Updates to Going Infinite

I have been working on two projects to enhance this blog. The first is to get some games recorded. I thought I finally had my recorder working so I jumped in a M13 Release Draft and recorded it. Unfortunately the playback was shaking so hard it was impossible to render. I may have to just lay down the $30 for a full copy of FRAPS and be done with it because videos would greatly enhance the site. There are so many things I want to record from trading walk-through’s to actual game play.

The other was getting games in with my Mono U Pauper deck to try and grow my tickets before Return to Ravnica releases in October. This one was a bit more successful but Mono U Control plays a bit slow for my taste and I found myself wanting to try a tempo build. Furthermore, the tournament practice room where I was playing was full of rogue decks and not many tier 1 entries. With the prizes for Pauper now paying M13 boosters I feel a lot more confidant jumping into the two-man queues to at least get in some real games.

While I’m not sure they will ever recover to higher levels, M13 Boosters can be hand right now for between 3.33 and 3.5. As I understand it, booster prices of first sets tank pretty hard by the end of release queues but recover slightly when they are over. I don’t see much recovery potential in M13, but I did put an offer in the classifieds to buy a draft set for 10 tix. I got two responses and was able to jump into a pair of release drafts.

M13 Release Drafts

Having missed the paper pre-release I have never drafted this set before so I chose Swiss and drafted rather poorly. I drafted the UW skys deck below with its expensive removal and inefficient creatures. You will notice the 6 ticket Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker and the 2.5 ticket Cathedral of War that I rare drafted purely to sell at the end of the draft. If I could pull out one win I would pay for this draft. Generally my rule of thumb is to only pull cards that are at least 3 tickets or more. There are a lot of people trying Cathedral right now, making it easy to dump and I’m selling because I don’t see it being a tier 1 card like Cavern of Souls

Release Draft One

Round 1 – Game 1 I was demolished by a well constructed RG deck with two Bladetusk Boar. Having only Primal Clay and removal to stop it, I quickly succumbed. Game two I managed to get out some blockers but he landed a Bladetusk Boar which I had a great plan to Switcheroo. Unfortunately I couldn’t really find creatures that I wanted to give up. I’m not sure what type of deck wants that card. Perhaps it is just a sideboard option for something truely nasty.

Round 2 – My opponent, intentionally or not, never came to the table and forfeit. I was now 1-1 and in the black on this draft. Everyone complains about all the bad breaks they get, but few remember times like this that help you get ahead. I had a couple of nifty trades in the break that helped me make up for last season as well. I’ll get into those later.

Round 3 – My opponent begins game one by scouting me, so I do the same. His round two opponent is playing a UR Mill deck. Janky stuff like that is why I love swiss. He’s got the deck I considered so its obvious we stole cards from each other during the draft. He has all the large flyers such as Serra Angel that would have made the cards I passed such as Sleep good. Below is my opening grip for Game 1

After scouting me for a good four minutes he plays a couple of turns and then concedes out of the blue. I’m now 2-1 and decide to do a bit of reading on pick order before heading off for another draft.

Release Draft Two

There were a couple of interesting picks that I want to highlight in this draft. Feel free to critique them in the comments:
P1P5: I’ve got red and black removal and a Harbor Bandit as my four cards. My choices are between a Volcanic Strength and Evolving Wilds. I took the Wilds. I was rewarded by a Volcanic Strength next pick.
P2P3: I took a Arms Dealer over a Bloodhunter Bat.
P2P4: Had a Serra Angel in it??? I took Duskmantle Prowler over Bloodhunter Bat
P3P1: I picked Murder over Ring of Xathrid. This one really vexed me, but I had only drafted 4 black creatures.
P3P3: Ring of Valkas vs Sign in Blood vs Krenko’s Command. I took the Sign.
P3P10: I grabbed the Drowned Catacomb for an extra source of Blue.

Here’s what I put together:

Round 1 – Game 1 I’m playing against UB Exalted. I have to mull but get a semi decent six. I never find a second swamp so both Sign in Blood and Murder get stuck in my hand until its too late. He has both of the Bloodhunter Bat that I passed and the Ring of Xathrid. Were it not for a timely Bloodhunter Bat I could have burned him out. Game 2 I fell victim to Talrand’s Invocation and Archaeomancer. I did manage to land an active Harbor Bandit, but the air assault was just too much.

Round 2 I’m playing UG Tempo. In Game 1, I open a pretty decent hand but he gets ahead of me and then makes things worse with Unsummon on my Scorpion which was protecting me from Garruk’s Packleader. Sleep the following turn did me in. Game two I boarded in two Duress and blew him out with double active Harbor Bandit. Game 3 I had to mull to six and open a less than exciting grip of high casting cost stuff. I get a Arms Dealer down but he uses Prey Upon to fight it with his Timberpack Wolf. I get stuck on three mountains and despite him only having two lands total. I lose from being behind in the tempo. Should I have mulled to 5?

I thought this deck was better than the last one. I scout my future 3rd round opponent to see if I can win a pity pack. Apparently he disconnected during the last part of the draft and during deck building so the AI put all 45 of his cards into his deck. He has some good cards, but they are so scarce that I win game 1 fairly easily. Game two got bogged down as he managed to remove all my evasive creatures, but I had an active Arms Dealer and drew Krenko’s Command. Removing his recluse allowed me to get the damage through.

My overall record for this draft was 1-2. My record on the night was 3-3. I drafted 8 tix worth of sell-able rares for a net loss of 6 tix While I want to win drafts, I don’t expect to make money there.

Since Last we Spoke

While I wasn’t playing a lot, I did keep tabs on my collection. Selling everything that was rotating and buying staples that should have potential, or that I might need for decks was fruitful. I found one bot that had mispriced his Cavern of Souls at 1 tix. Unlike paper magic where you might feel good about telling your LGS that his cards are under-priced, there is no reason to have mercy on bots. If I emailed this bot owner, the odds that someone else would buy it before he got there were pretty high.

Wizards also gave us some free stuff, but I didn’t sell mine in time to really profit. I kept everything but I won’t be including it in this value.  Either I miscalculated the fetch land totals last time, or they recovered miraculously. A playset is 85 tix right now.  Considering they aren’t especially relevant unless I start playing modern the fluctuation is distracting.  The collection value when we started this exercise (not counting fetches) was 181 tickets.

Here is my collection value as of 8/2/2012

Trade Stock	Value	Total
27 Event Tickets	1	27
4 Promo Wurmcoil Engine	3	12
3 M13 Booster	3.33	10
4 Clifftop Retreat	1.33	5
4 Isolated Chapel	2.15	8
4 Sulfur Falls	2	8
4 Woodland Cemetary	1.25	5
4 Hinterland Harbor	2.05	8
4 Cavern of Souls	4.7	19
Misc Non-Staples (Mythics/Rares)		0
Total		102

Non-Trade Staples	Value
1 Pauper Goblin Deck	16
1 Pauper Mono Blue Control Deck	56
1 Momir Vig Avatar	10
1 Playset of M11 Lands	5
Total	87

For those of you following along my revised starting value was 181 Tix. Last week’s value was 194 Tix. Today’s Value is 189 Tix.

Even in release queues, drafting is usually a negative effort.

This little guy is one of the reprints that Modern deckbuilders have been waiting for. Rancor was going to break the format open. Bant Aggro was looking for that little push to put them in the top tier. Zoo was looking for a comeback. Infect was looking to finally be a deck. Today I’m going to discuss BUG Infect and whether or not Rancor has finally pushed it over the top.

In a known meta, there are several places to get ideas for rogue decks. One is taking new cards or synergies and trying to build around them. The decks that spawned from the printing of Worldfire would be a good example, but this is slightly different. This is a known archetype, just a weak one that has the potential to emerge if the right cards are printed or added to the card pool. The good news is that there are archetypes to build from, the trap is to try to keep using strategies that don’t work while squeezing in new cards like silver bullets.

When testing any new deck, especially a deck that I haven’t played before, I like to fill the slots differently than I would if I were trying to play the most streamlined version. Sometimes I will put in cards that might be weaker, or already proven to not work to see if they are stronger elsewhere. I always like to put a variety of cards in the deck over a list of automatic four-of’s. I might find a card is particularly strong against a strategy employed by some decks but not others. These cards may end up in the sideboard after testing, or they may get removed depending on how the metagame I expect to face is shaping up.

Today’s list is an adaptation of a couple of UG Infect lists from MTGO daily events with a splash of Black suggested by DrWorm on MTG Salvation. Here is the deck we are testing:

vs Jund

I started my testing against Jund and did surprisingly well. We played 5 games which isn’t a huge sample size but it gave me an idea. These games like all preliminary testing are all mainboard. My test partner was my wife Nancy who has been a big encourager of me continuing this blog.

Jund Game 1 -
I was on the play with a first turn Glistener Elf. She opened with a tapland having no first turn play. My second turn consisted of getting in for 1. She untapped and played Dark Confidant who quickly ate Dismember. My third turn involved double Groundswell for nine poison counters ending the game. She revealed Jund Charm. I guess it pays to be on the play.

Jund Game 2 -
I opened this game with a Glistener Elf again and a series of two drops along with Groundswell and Vines of Vastwood. Turn two I swung in with Groundswell and vines backup rather than deploy one of my two drops. Thoughtsieze took the vines from my hand and Jund Charm ate my board. My opponent started chipping away with Bob and a resolved Liliana of the Veil threatened to lock me down. Unfortunately for her I started in with my second Inkmoth Nexus. With no further instant speed removal Inkmoth Nexus eventually got there on the back of a topdeck vines.

Jund Game 3 -
This game was practically a repeat of game 1. With Duress and a plenty my opponent started shredding my hand. It was tough having to pick between Groundswell and Rancor. She picked Rancor and got five poison counters next turn as a thank you. Thoughtsize ate a two drop but Terminate was thwarted by Apostle’s Blessing.

Jund Game 4 -
This was a fairly long game that I nearly lost. With no turn one Glistener Elf. I did manage to find all four Blighted Agents this game many of which died to removal. Fortunately the last one stuck and I was able to ride it to victory the turn before I died to Huntmaster of the Fells. This is the only game that I actually cast Rancor but it was countered for no legal target when my Blighted Agent found himself electrified.

Jund Game 5 -
My opponent started this game with a pair of Inquision of Kozilak trying to clean up my hand. I had a lot of pump this game but only the lone Glistener Elf to protect. At one point I had to crack a fetch on my opponent’s turn to save my elf from a Lightning Bolt. She got down Dark Confidant as a blocker but had to sacrifice him to answer a Mutagenic Growth. Jund Charm gave him two +1/+1 counters to force the trade, but Inkmoth Nexus and Pendelhaven sealed the game.

I was rather impressed by the deck’s ability to handle a deck I was sure would be trouble. I’m sure Jund will have a better chance post board bringing in even more removal.

Vs Delver

My second test match was a set of five vs UW Restoration Delver.

Delver Game 1 -
Nancy had an incredibly hard time getting delver to flip in this game. Despite holding me at bay for a bit with Snapcaster Mage and Gut Shot eventually she succumbed to mana flood while Pendlehaven managed to push damage through.

Delver Game 2 -
Against UW its very easy to take a lot of pain early. I had to mull this game but quickly found out that her only counter magic was Spell Snare and Deprive. Deprive stopped Rancor but left her down mana out and unable to answer a double Groundswell the next turn.

Delver Game 3 -
This game showed me no turn 1 elf which is a very important play. Delver of Secrets flipped on the first try and Vendilion Clique stripped my Plague Stinger. At six a turn this game was soon over.

Delver Game 4 -
This game I opened with a Glistener Elf, a Plague Stinger, and a Blighted Agent but no source of green. In a ranked match I would have thrown this back, but I was holding Groundswell and Vines of Vastwood.

If the lack of green was bad enough, two Delver of Secrets flew their way to victory after a crucial Spell Snare on my Plague Stinger.

Delver Game 5 -
This game could have gone either way. I was low on pump spells so I started out with a batch of steady poison. I got her to 7 counters before Restoration Angel and Snapcaster Mage wiped my board. I took one turn of beats and topdecked Dismember to deal with the offensive angel. Fortunately I had just enough mana to get through Spell pierce. Inkmoth Nexus came down and sealed the deal.

While the results came out 3-2, I think had I continued to play they would have been pretty even. The aggro deck is going to be better against pure UW Restoration Builds but not as effective against Delver Decks. I would rate this match 50/50 or at best 55%.

Next time, I’ll be covering results from a couple of the interactive aggro decks including Affinity and Boros.

I started this week (March 1) with a few trades:

-4 Garruk, Primal Hunter
-3 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
-3 Inkmoth Nexus
+3 ISD Booster
+3 DKA Booster
+47 Tickets

The packs actually were a mistake. I was attempting to get into a DKA release sealed event but packs are not an entry option. You can use packs for draft, but not for Sealed.

Having not played for two months, I’m not sure my original plan is still as effective as before. M12 packs were selling for 3.6 when I made my first post, today they sell for 3. This eliminates two man queues as a source of even testing income which forces me to rely on daily events. My first goal was to play in five daily events this week. My second was to accelerate the pace that I started looking at Block Constructed.

Block Constructed is slowly adjusting to the release of Dark Ascension. Currently the WR Aggro decks featuring Hellrider are ahead of other Innistrad only strategies. It normally takes about three weeks for the meta to begin to stabilize and fortunately single cards from the latest set as a whole are relatively cheap as release drafters desire to turn thier cards into tickets.

While I certainly don’t want to skimp on a deck, the goal is to get a deck that can win enough matches to keep increasing my value.

For those of you just catching up, here is the Pauper deck I’m playing:

Daily Event 1 7:30 Wednesday

Round 1 – Able playing Mono Green
I really hate this deck. It’s not good, but it is fairly good against my deck so the matches are always really close. I lost this one pretty close and got really angry about it. I’m looking at the results for the last five daily events and this deck only 3-1′s twice. That means it doesn’t win. Why do I keep having to play against it?
0-1

Round 2 – vinn-torres UR Storm
Game 1 he started to go off on turn 3, but fizzled. I converted a 1 land hand which is pretty bad but it got me in a better mood after loosing to mono green. Game 2 I mulled into 2 Mountains and Seismic Shudder. I played very carefully pinging him 1 point at a time with Goblin Arsonist until I had a 3rd land. I got him to 5 and perhaps I should have converted by sacrificing the arsonist and trying to burn him out with Death Spark and Chain Lightning, but I let him try to go off. He cast Gitaxian Probe and upon seeing the Seismic Shudder in my hand decided he didn’t have a counter and conceded.
1-1

Round 3 – holla Playing Mono Blue Control
On MTGSalvation, they call this deck Mono Blue Annoying. It certainly is. I kept a one land hand with some gas game 1 but quickly stalled out. Game 2 I thought I would be able to push through the last few points, but made the mistake of burying my Death Spark in the attempt. He had the Hydroblast ready. I didn’t see Smash to Smithereens until it was too late. I wouldn’t be upset about loosing this match because it’s really 50/50 or probably more in my favor since there are so many ways to push through the last couple of points. He got his sideboard cards and I didn’t.

I played a couple of two mans to make me feel better because my wife was still putting my son to bed. I went 2-1 Beating MBC but loosing to Storm.

It turns out there were a lot of people playing that Mono Green deck. My first round opponent played goblins all four rounds. He was 2-2 at the tournament’s end loosing a lot of momentum on Sparksmith. After consulting with some other goblin players I made the following changes to my deck:

-1 Mogg Flunkies
+1 Sparksmith

Daily Event 2 2:00pm Wednesday

Round 1 – zoibor mono black aggro

Game 1 I kept a 1 land hand with 3 one drops. Duress ate my Death Spark and I never connected with a second mountain in time. I’m wondering more and more when I should be keeping 1 land hands. IE how often do I win off a 1 land hand. I’m willing to bet its actually pretty low.

I wasn’t sure how to sideboard for this matchup considering most of his creatures can’t block mine, so sylvok lifestaff is dependant on me sac’ing goblins.

Game 2 he ostrasized my 2 drop and I drew mountains. Sparksmith ate Diabolic Edict and after that my burn couldn’t keep up. I never saw anything from my board, so it wouldn’t have mattered, but the correct play would have been to board in:

+2 Lifestaff
+2 Flame Slash
+2 Seismic Shudder
-2 Goblin Raider
-2 Mogg Flunkies
-2 Goblin Arsonist

Round 2 Abaris playing Storm

Game 1 I get about the best draw I could have against storm I get her down to 6 life and she takes herself to 4 off of sign in blood. I so wish I had fireblast about that moment, but I did force her to storm out on turn 3. She manages to kill me via Grapeshot.

Game 2 I opened a hand that had 2 Pyroblast, 4 Mountains and a Goblin Bushwhacker. Should I have kept that? I keep a 1 land six and he stormed out via Grapeshot on T2. I could have tried to mull until I hit Pyroblast but I wouldn’t have gotten an easy sucker punch on a blue draw spell after 2-3 Gitaxian Probe.

---

Edit: June 1 Update – If you haven’t noticed I’ve taken some time off. I’m not sure if I’m going to buy back into ISD-DKA-AVR Block or just wait for RtR to make another run (most likely RtR). I know for sure that I won’t be playing Pauper again in tournaments until it starts paying out in M13 packs. I basically liquidated my packs and extras turning 57 tix for a fully functional MUC Pauper deck that I’ll have to learn how to play in the mean time.

This is the current value of my collection as of June 4, 2012. We’ll use it as the basis for any future runs to go infinite.

Here is my collection value as of 6/4/2012

Trade Stock	Value	Total
67 Event Tickets	1	67
4 Promo Wurmcoil Engine	3.9	15
4 Ratchet Bomb	2	8
4 Clifftop Retreat	1.8	7
4 Hinterland Harbor	1.5	6
Misc Non-Staples (Mythics/Rares)		0
Total		103

Non-Trade Staples	Value
1 Pauper Goblin Deck	18
1 Pauper Mono Blue Control Deck	56
1 Momir Vig Avatar	10
1 Playset of M11 Lands	5
1 Playset of Fetch Lands	47
Total	136

For those of you following along my original starting value was 251 Tix. This week’s value is 239 Tix.

Fetch Lands took a huge hit as people sold them off and redemption ended. That was about 30 tix in lost value. I should have sold them off during the Modern PTQ season, but I wasn’t sure how sticky the final prices would be. At peak value I might could have gotten nearly 100 tix for them. I’m not really worried about that. Live and Learn.

The cards that gained the most were the ISD Slow Lands. I most likely will finish that set. The only one that costs more than the two I have are the Isolated Chapel. Since ISD is not being drafted as regularly those prices should go up.

Last week I promised to show you a Pauper deck that I built for 0.93 tickets. I really got excited when I realized how cheap this deck is because there are so many new players getting started online and they don’t really want to spend a ton of money without knowing the client. This deck lets them get started and get a feel for MTGO before investing any extra money.

I’m not 100% sure who actually developed this deck, but you can watch dimecollectorsc do a short decktech on the Gruul Deck which was developed specifically to handle UR Cloudpost.

This is the decklist:

I took the newly built Gruul deck to the tournament practice room to get a feel for it.

Match One – Pauper Jund

I open up against nebuloushelix playing Pauper Jund. He plays out a bunch of GB wither and persist creatures from Shadowmoor and counter producers like Shambling Shell to keep the -1/-1 counters off. I’ve never seen a deck like this, and while it looks like it would be rather effective in Modern PDC*, I question the effectiveness in Classic Pauper.

I survived G1 by throwing bodies in front of his creatures until he was unable to persist them and then started the Blastoderm beatdown. 1-0

I sideboarded out my River Boas which would not be very effective against his wither creatures and replaced them with Stone Rain and 1 Branching Bolt. He opens up game two with a pile of border posts. Stone Rain came down on a Forest but if I see this deck again, I’ll bring in Ancient Grudge.

G2 he managed to get down a Putrid Leech with Gift of the Deity, but his low life prevented him from attacking. I drew into Vulshok Morningstar and he conceded. 1-0 2-0

Match Two – Mono U Post Control

The second match I played with this deck was against Mono U Post Control. I figured this might be a pretty easy matchup with the main deck river boa.

Game 1 he had early counters to keep my Civic Wayfinders from finding moutains. A pair of Jolrael’s Centaurs began an early beatdown process followed by a river boa. Dispite a lot of lifegain, I felt pretty confident about this game until he dropped a Serrated Arrows. The main deck arrows bought him time to build up to Capsize mana and the game was over. 0-1

-4 Safehold Elite
-2 Arbor Elf
+3 Ancient Grudge
+3 Stone Rain

Game 2 began with an early Jolrael’s Centaur followed by a Vulshok Morningstar equiped Arbor Elf. The pair put him very low until he answered the Elf with Echoing Truth. My burn to the face was answered by Hydroblast, but Blastoderm went unanswered and he conceded.

Game 3 began with an equiped River Boa. He finally managed to bounce it on 7 life dropping a pile of Spire Golem and a Serrated Arrows. Baiting counterspells with Jolrael’s Centaur, Ancient Grudge ate the Arrows and the Boa came back to the table and picked up his mace. Unable to stop the snake, he conceded. 2-0 4-1

Match Three – Infect

Game 1 I opened a great hand dropping a Llanowar Elves and then a Civic Wayfinder. My opponent opened with a Glistener Elf + Rancor which I blocked with the Wayfinder. Ichorclaw Myr was soon down to carry the overpowered enchantment and a Kicked Vines of Vastwood carried him to victory. 0-1

-2 Arbor Elf
-4 River Boa
-1 Vulshok Morningstar
+3 Ancient Grudge
+4 Seismic Shudder

Game two began with Evolving Wilds for a Mountain to bolt the Turn 1 Glistner Elf. No creatures from the green deck resulted in a quick ramp to Blastoderm. Cystbearer received Rancor and then a Kicked Vines of Vastwood to blow out the second Blastoderm set up as a blocker. Holding the Cystbearer back for the first Blastoderm to fade away he was able to finish me with a series of pump spells. I see this being a poor match for the GR deck.2-1 4-3

Match Four – Burn.

This is the first time I’ve seen this matchup online and it mostly involves them throwing spells at your face rather than your creatures. I think they could really slow this deck down with some targeted burn at the mana elves (Lava Spike) but my opponent continued to throw burn at my face.

Game one I only blocked Keldon Marauders with a persist creature while proceding to beat face with a River Boa and Two Jorael’s Centaur. He ran out of cards before being able to deal lethal damage. I was at 3 life. 1-0

Game two he got stuck on two lands and quickly conceded. 3-1 6-3

Match Five – Green Beats

I mulled a one land hand on the play into a less than ideal hand of Two Geistflame a split pair of lands a Llanowar Elves and a Jolrael’s Centaur. I burned his early 1 drops. He managed to get a pumped Qurion Ranger through for 9 but conceded the match when I manged to stick a River Boa. I assume he had nothing to give his creatures trample. I didn’t count this match in my results.

Match Six – Burn

Game 1 was quick with a series of Lightning Bolts, Flame Rift and finally Fireblast. 0-1

Game 2 he sent his smaller removal at my mana elves briefly slowing production but not preventing me from landing two River Boa and a Jolrael’s Centaur. One of the River Boa died while the other picked up a Vulshuk Morningstar. In the face of Blastoderm he conceded 1-1

Game 3 we both opened with Evolving Wilds. He burned my Safehold Elite with Searing Blaze and began a series of cantrips looking for burn. Faithless Looting found its mark allowing him to burn me out the turn before a lethal Blastoderm was scheduled to connect. 3-2 7-5

All in all I wasn’t disapointed by the deck, but I wasn’t impressed by it. I only got to play a couple of tier 1 matches, and I think it certainly will give blue decks fits, but will struggle against some of the faster decks in the format and decks where creatures don’t matter as much such as Mono-Black Control. I may play the deck more, but unless results improve I need to stick with something more reliable.

Continuing with Goblins

I continued to play Goblins this week in ranked matches, but I think the changes I made were not for the best. I played in 4 more two man queues bringing my total record to 5-3. While that seems great, with M12 packs going for an all time low, I’m barely breaking even.

I did get a chance to read a great article on Pauper Goblins by David Kahn. It’s a bit dated as the format has changed quite a bit, but the advice on Death Spark alone makes it worth a read. I have been reviewing sources across the net to make sure that I’m playing the deck as best I can.

I entered Goblins in my first daily event this week.

Round 1 – Kasparadi playing Goblins

Game 1 I thought I opened a stelar draw, but he had double bushwhacker and put it away. Game 2 was a slugfest that ultimately ended with him drawing both of his Sylvok Lifestaff. I’m starting to think I knew at that point that I should have brought in artifact destruction. I could never draw enough burn, so I conceded with 3 min left in the match.
0-1

Round 2 – Trollshow playing Elves

After three min of him scouting my extra long second game we got underway. I kept a risky 1 land hand with a pair of 1 drops and 3 burn spells. One thing I don’t like about this deck is how many 1 land openers it has. I hate to mull and certainly don’t have it just right for this deck. I get down Jackal Familiar and a Mogg Flunkies. I trade a bunch of burn for a bunch of his pump spells but eventually a second Mogg Flunkies goes the distance.

Game 2 I tap out turn 2 and he drops a Rancor on a Skarrgan Pit-Skulk. My attempts to burn it fail and I loose that game easily.

Game 3 I play a bit more cautious. He attempts to put Rancor on a Rogue Elephant and I attempt to burn it in response. Normally I wouldn’t try to use burn during his turn but the chance to get rid of that pesky enchantment is worth it. He thinks a while and then responds with Mutagenic Growth. He opts not to swing and loose his Elephant which I don’t understand considering it would have wiped my board which consisted of 2 Goblin Tokens. I drew Chain Lightning and managed to kill the Elephant next turn. A Mogg War Marshal and Two Goblin Bushwhacker later he concedes.
1-1

Round 3 – Qentba playing Elves

Game 1 I kept an excellent opener with 3 mountains a pair of Goblin Cohert, a war marshal and a Fireblast. He responded with a pair of Skarrgan Pit-Skulk which I couldn’t block. My army of creatures quickly overwhelmed him however and Fireblast finished the game.

I changed my sideboard plan this time.

-2 Goblin Arsonist
-1 Mudbrawler Cohort
+2 Flame Slash
+1 Sylvok Lifestaff

I opened one of those Flame Slash which saved me from a Rancored Nettle Sentinal. I then found out that he kept a 1 land hand also. I drew mountains and goblins started to flow. With 6 goblins on the board even killing one a turn would quickly draw him in range of my burn. He conceded.
2-1

Round 4 – Zturchan playing MBC

This used to be a great match for me, but MBC has evolved and is no longer the weak creature, no removal deck it used to be when it was facing only storm and other control decks for the top spot. I lost my first two creatures in game 1 to Funeral Charm followed by Dead Weight and Victim of Night. Chittering Rats forced the little burn I had back to the top of my deck putting me in topdeck mode. His creatures whittled away at me. At one point I had him down to 4 life, but his discard earlier had forced me to use my Fireblast.

Game two I threw away my opening hand which was 3 Mountain a Flame Slash, a Fireblast and a Mogg Raider. I really didn’t think this hand was agressive enough. I kept a similar 6 however but I did manage to get down a Goblin Cohort plus a Goblin Bushwhacker. His discard stripped my hand forcing me to use Death Spark and then attempt to get a creature to die on top of it. That proved to be no problem as my last creature died to Victim of Night. Of the next eight cards I drew 6 of them were Mountains. Even my opponent considered the aweful string of luck. Ah such is Magic: The Gathering.
2-2

A couple of observations about this tournament: Many players opted to continue to play even after being eliminated. I’ve done that before, but in the past, about fifty percent of the time I was the only player left and got a bye, thus didn’t get to play which was the whole point of staying in the tournament.

My first round opponent Kasparadi went 4-0 with a 8-0 record. I did stay up and watch some of his replays including the matchup against MBC he played in Round 2. His Sparksmith which can be a liability in the mirror helped keep the board clear in the MBC matchup. I’m still not sure that matchup is favored against goblins anymore.

The results to that tournament are recorded here.

I’m out 6 tix on that experience. I’ll have to make them up somewhere, but I am certainly going back to a more traditional build with Sparksmith.

My collection unfortunatly fell back to earth from last week’s speculation prior to the Pro Tour. Inkmoth Nexus took a huge hit which I can’t really explain other than their absense from this week’s Grand Prix. It’s likely time to sell those. I can get out now with a break even point on Garruk which I will do Tuesday night as people are buying cards for redemption. I may try to unload them to a human in the Classifieds to get a couple more tickets.

Here is my collection value as of 2/27/2012

Trade Stock	Value	Total
16 Event Tickets	1	16
5 M12 Booster	3	15
3 Inkmoth Nexus	6.2	18
4 Promo Wurmcoil Engine	5.2	21
3 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon	5.4	16
4 Garruk, Primal Hunter	12.5	50
4 Ratchet Bomb	3.1	12
4 Hinterland Harbor	1.0	4
Misc Non-Staples (Mythics/Rares)		2
Total		154

Non-Trade Staples	Value
1 Pauper Goblin Deck	18
1 Momir Vig Avatar	10
1 Playset of M11 Lands	7
1 Playset of Fetch Lands	72
Total	107

For those of you following along my original starting value was 251 Tix. Last week’s value was 295 Tix.

Today’s Total was 261 Tix or a net loss of 34 from last week.

*While I don’t play PDC any more, I just found out that Kor Skyfisher is banned in Modern PDC. I hated that card with a passion when I was playing Extended PDC last year. Empty the Warrens is also banned which sounds great to me.