Week 6

MaximumCDawg 0 - 2 Dave Kaplan

MaximumCDawg: First match, I keep a hand with two Bobs and a Stoneforge. I figure that I’ll jam 2cc dorks until one sticks, end with the Stoneforge, and try to ride that out. We trade discard and countermagic and then I resolve Bob. I miss Bob’s first trigger and then he eats a bolt, so Bob didn’t accomplish much. Eventually Stoneforge and Batterskull do arrive, but in the three turns it takes to get that far a Pyromancer has been giving birth for a few turns and he has been digging up a storm. Dack arrives to deal with Batterskull and a second Pyromancer makes things totally ridiculous.

SB: I bring in the Illness in the Ranks.

Second match, I fan to a hand with only a Plains for mana. That’s not gonna do it. So I fan to six with NO mana. Then fan to five, see a Wasteland as only mana. Finally, I fan to four and find a swamp, nighthawk, Illness, and Inquisition. I lead with Swamp->Inquire and it eats a Misstep. Perfect. I then resolve Illness, and hope that shutting off Pyromancer will give me time to play with. He resolves a Delver but it can’t flip, and eventually gets killed by Innocent Blood. Then, opponent starts playing Pyros as grizzly bears, which is just fine because I’m stuck on 2 lands. By the time I finally get to cast Nighthawk, it’s just too late.

Tom Dixon 2 - 0 James Saltsman

Tom Dixon: G1: I had Bazaar on 7, with Dredgers and Bridge. He wasted me but I was able to get to 8 a few times and eventually Ichorid and Bloodghast made enough Zombies to eat his brains.

G2: I keep a no Bazaar hand with Powder because it has Chewer 2 Claim Narco and 2 lands as well. He has no hate and only Thorns. I cast Narco to bring the beats and later draw Bazaar. From there, it’s academic as my Chewer ate his Forgemaster and then another found his Chalice 1 which freed my Claim’s. He also had Crypt as his mana source which really put him away.

Matthew Gottshall 0 - 2 White Lotus

White Lotus: Defense grids/Abeyances get there after being countered and tutored up multiple times. G1 on the back of tezzeret -2 fetch Time vault + untap with Mind over Matter. G2 I stroke myself for 27 (the rest of my deck), untap Candelabra (which untaps Academy and Minamo, minamo untaps Academy) a bunch of times with Mind over matter and stroke my opponent with over 900 blue mana in pool.

Wappla 1 - 2 Sean Ottaway

Brian Kelly 2 - 1 Stormanimagus

Brian Kelly: Thank you to the commentators for their work. There were a few questions raised which I’ll attempt to explain here. In game 1, the reason I didn’t play Top off Orchard was twofold. I wanted to wait until his EoT to give him the token so he couldn’t pressure Jace and more importantly, I knew the Top would go flying into the graveyard post-Oath where it could easily be retrieved by Auriok or the Will in my hand. Also, the reason I kept Auriok #1 in hand was so that the Oath would dig more deeply. Until I found the Orchard I put Yawgmoth’s Will second from the top so that if need be, I could draw a card for draw phase, have Will be on Top, and use Jace 0 sacrificing Lion’s Eye Diamond in response, then play Will with the mana and retrieve both the Lotus and LED and whatever else was in there (Repeal on something).

The Tinker/Sphinx is in the sideboard for “fair” decks, specifically Delver but also Merfolk and Hatebear. If there’s a Cage or Containment Priest in play, Tinker can get Black Lotus, Engineered Explosives, Top, or Pyrite Spellbomb which conveniently kills Containment Priests. I sometimes include Sphinx without Tinker as an Oath target against Shops. I also include Tinker without Sphinx against Dredge since it gets a Nihil Spellbomb, Crypt, or Explosives. Another thing I do in boarding on the draw v. Shop is to take out Yawgmoth’s Will and Demonic Tutor. Will is nearly impossible to get value out of with their oppression and Demonic Tutor is often too expensive and awkward to cast under Spheres. Most of the time it’s for artifact removal so it makes more sense to just drop it for a Nature’s Claim/Grudge. Keep in mind with Oath of Druids active, Grudges go wheezing off into the graveyard for future use which is happy times.

The FoW count varies with iterations but this version of the deck especially is far more combo than control. The threats are difficult to interact with via nuisance counters, pretty much only FoW and Mana Drain (rarely seen) interact with Oath of Druids & Auriok Salvagers, so we’re better off Flusterstorming that bs. 4x Force is a death sentence against Gush decks which can outdraw you like mad. You want to negate that without pitching your business spells, which is why Cavern of Souls, Oath of Druids, and Dromoka are better places to be than FoW. It’s unique on the draw against Shops, far less impressive on the play, and that’s about all that’s good about it. I appreciate 4x Force in Landstill or my Gush decks but more and more we’re seeing Storm and Academy players go to Defense Grid and things that enable high threat density rather than FoW which is the better approach for a combo deck.

Game 3, I decided not to expose the Orchard since there was nothing I feared having NC and SS in hand with 5 mana on board and Jace in play. Anything he played could then be destroyed and if it were Chalice 1, my board state does not care at that point. Jace will either find the Grudge, Decay, Explosives (which can then destroy any Chalice configuration since LoA and Sol Ring produce colorless) or more likely I’ll ignore it and Oath up monsters. Kael noticed I could destroy potential Revoker with Pyrite Spellbomb and keeping Orchard in hand insured against that contingency. There was no need to rush into finding a win con cause Jace had taken over the game and would continue to do so. Even without Oath of Druids, the point would soon approach where I’d find Academy, destroy Chalice 0 and start hardcasting the monsters. Very inevitable. It wasn’t really a tense moment when Noah went to the landlord; the game was already won.

And yes I board out 1 Salvagers as well as the Lion’s Eye Diamond. Good observation by Kael.