After a few weeks of theory, I decided to be a little more “hands on” today. Departing from my usual single-subject articles, I’m going to touch on a multitude of subjects today without really going in depth into anything. Just imagine you’re listening to my soothing voice (we’re imagining here, remember?) telling you about all kinds of things Magic.
This article started out as a tournament report of my latest outing in our regular Legacy tournament, but this is going to be more than just a list of matches and how they went. If you’re ready for a little bit of everything from in-depths match descriptions to mind tricks to sideboarding strategies for my opponent’s decks, give it a go.
In The Beginning Was The Decklist
First we have to return to the classic form, though. A tournament report in which you don’t even know what deck you’re following isn’t particularly exciting, after all. So here is another look at my trusty friends from the Caw Cartel:
Creatures (8)
Planeswalkers (5)
Lands (20)
Spells (28)
I’ve already talked about this deck—my go-to deck for any event I plan on winning for at least half a year now—in a number of other articles, so if you’re interested in learning more about the deck either look here and here (and for me failing with the deck here), ask in the comments, or send me a private message on mtgthesource.com (I’m Mon, Goblin Chief). You can also find short tournament reports in the bonus sections of a few of my articles if this one made you want more.
Even though I’ve already talked about the deck a lot, a brief explanation seems in order for those not regularly following my work. Caw Cartel is a control deck built around the cantrip engine usually used by combo decks. The extreme consistency this manipulation-heavy shell affords lets us run a very low land count (think Gro) and gives us the ability to consistently pair up Squadron Hawks with a Brainstorm effect to create a virtual Ancestral Recall (“Hawkcestral”). The overwhelming burst of card advantage* is then leveraged into a dominating board position before random guys or a ramping Jace end the game.
In short, burst card advantage is much more powerful, card for card, than continuous card advantage. The reason for this is, essentially, tempo. By having full and immediate access to the cards, you get to leverage them to move the game towards the position you want it to end up sooner. In a way, the power level of the cards drawn rises even though they remain the same cards because they’re available earlier.
Note that the deck is 61 cards, as are a lot of my creations, and would actually be better without the Elspeth. Both curve and spell-mix wise, this list minus the Elspeth is the ideal configuration of library manipulation, mana, on-stack interaction, and board control elements for the deck, at least in my experience. The problem I’ve run into is rounds against slower players taking too long without another finisher-type card, which is why Elspeth has made the team lately. Because the mix of all other elements works so perfectly, though, Elspeth had to be a 61st card because cutting something else would screw the balance between the different elements much more than just adding another card does (my earlier lists had 61 cards, too, simply because I prefer to metagame the deck by adding a card instead of risking to disrupt the delicate balance of capacities the 60 base cards provide).
Now that you know what to expect, let’s get into the gritty details. Oh yeah, our local events are generally five rounds, Swiss only.
Let’s Fight
Round 1: Tobias Machewitz with Reanimator
We agree to high-roll with a D20 to decide who starts, and I obviously score a mighty one. My opponent decides to ration his strength and beats me with an efficient two.
Game 1: I mull to five, keep a double Island hand, and drop those while he sculpts with cantrips and fetches for two turns. He Reanimates a Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur on turn three (I have the Counterspell, but he has a second Reanimate), while I don’t have white mana for my Swords. I find white off a Ponder on my turn, but his seven new cards do in fact include a Force of Will, and I scoop before showing him anything else.
Sideboarding
– 4 Squadron Hawk
– 2 Moat
– 2 Oblivion Ring
– 1 Elspeth
– 2 Snapcaster Mage
+ 3 Surgical Extractions
+ 2 Spell Pierce
+ 1 Vendilion Clique
+ 3 Path to Exile
+ 2 Wrath of God
Basically you take out your unnecessary late game action (four-drops, flexible removal, and the Caw burst advantage) for early game interaction, the theory being that your late game is good enough to beat them anyway with just Jace and cantrips so you should concentrate simply on staying alive.
Wheel of Sun and Moon is generally too slow against Reanimator, which precludes the Enlightened Tutor package. I usually don’t bring in both Wraths against Reanimator (and keep the Snapcasters) until I know they’re still packing shroud guys, but he discarded Empyrial Archangel off Jin-Gitaxias and wanted some applicable answer.
Game 2: Spell Pierce and Force of Will stop his early reanimation attempts, and I resolve a Vendilion Clique soon enough, seeing Show and Tell, Jin-Gitaxias, and a Polluted Delta. Considering my hand at that point includes Wrath, Plow, and Path, I let him keep all of them, and Clique kills him before he gets anything relevant done.
Game 3: His turn to mulligan to five, and his first turn play is “go.” He doesn’t draw a land before I’ve landed a Jace and is never in it.
My opponent asked me after the match if I agreed with his keep. His hand had both Entomb and Animate Dead, as well as a Brainstorm to find the second land if he ever drew the first. This kind of hand is something many players would snap mulligan because if they don’t hit, they won’t even get to play a game. I don’t think that should really be a consideration when mulliganing, though. What you need to evaluate isn’t how much fun your match might be but how you have the best chance of winning. As such, I’d probably have kept that five-card hand, too. If you draw a single land by turn three, you probably end up doing something broken nearly on schedule. There aren’t all that many four-card hands that can aspire to even resolve an early fattie, and I think gambling on the land here is higher EV than mulling for lands when you can’t reasonably expect them to come with solid business.
Round 2: Nico Meißner with U/W Stoneblade
Another round, another lost roll.
Game 1: I keep a one-lander but have a bunch of cantrips and never miss a land drop. He on the other hand gets a Stoneforge Mystic Spell Snared and makes my Swords-to-Plowshares-flooded hand better by attacking with Mishras (though at least he didn’t miss any land drops either so I suspect he drew a few more lands than was good for him). I resolve a Clique seeing Jace, Force, Mystic, and two lands, pushing the Jace, and slam my own Jace on my turn. He hasn’t hit a blue card, and that’s basically it. SFM for Batterskull resolves (though I kill the Mystic) while I start introducing Jace to my squadron of friends. When I O-Ring his Batterskull with Jace in play and Hawks already amassing, he scoops them up.
I was happy but not really surprised to pick up a win here. I don’t think I’ve actually lost a match to U/W Blade with this deck, ever, and being massively favored pre-board is a strong element of this. The game-one win is always incredibly important in control mirrors because they usually take a hell of a long time, especially when a true control deck like Caw Cartel without dedicated (fast) finishers is involved.
I honestly believe that it is in your best interest to build your deck with a particular focus on the control mirror if you decide on playing hardcore control even if there aren’t many control decks present. Control on control is where you’re most likely to run out of time in the round and therefore is where winning game one is the most valuable. Being weak to aggro pre-board but overwhelming post-board is fine—if you lose, you generally lose fast and have the time to bring the full power of your board to bear. If you’re weak to control and lose the first game after a thirty-minute struggle, even the most powerful board will leave you hard-pressed to take down another two in the remaining twenty minutes.
Sideboarding
– 1 Swords to Plowshares
+ 1 Vendilion Clique
The maindeck already being configured to beat up on other control decks, I sideboard with a very light touch here. Note that you actively still want to have a lot of removal post-board against U/W Blade because Caw Cartel is much better at sticking (and keeping) a Jace—which is what control mirrors usually come down to in the end (the most important reason I would never ever board out Forces as many are wont to do—you need FoW to win fights over Jace before you have a million mana).
Playing an aggro-control game is the best option for U/W Blade, meaning your removal is actually great even against such a creature light deck. It all boils down to making sure you don’t get beaten down by an early guy carrying a Sword of Feast and Famine.
The whole Jace-focus of control-on-control matches is also the reason I love to board in another Clique in these matches, as it both helps resolve your own Jaces and helps neutralize theirs (either by pushing them before they can be cast or by attacking them).
Game 2: I keep a hand with decent mana and late game but without either cantrips or removal. That means I have to blow a Force on a turn-two Mystic (remember the plan) while just making my land drops. He Surgical Extractions my Forces during my draw step, seeing I’m holding at least a Clique, Moat, and Elspeth. When he plays and cracks a fetchland on turn four, I expect the Jace and Clique him in response. Little do I know what I’m in for. He reveals a monster hand: two Jaces, Elspeth, Snapcaster, and FoW (with two Mishras in play). Sick decision, that.
This is when I have to map out how the rest of the game needs to play out. I can’t stop him from Jacing because he has doubles, which is bad. As such, my only answer for Jace is to create a board presence that will constantly threaten it. For the moment the Clique will do, though that ends as soon as he draws a removal spell. So this is what I settle on: assuming the Clique will manage to deal with the current Jace (he has to either keep ramping it or to start bouncing the Clique), Moat is a threat he can’t allow to resolve because he relies on creatures to end his games. At the same time, Elspeth is my best plan to create a continuous threat to keep more Jaces from coming down, so I’ll have to leverage him knowing I have a Moat to neutralize his Force (and another blue card) and rely on Elspeth to win the game for me instead. His Elspeth is the most efficient answer he has to both Moat and my Elspeth, so that’s what I take with the Clique.
He, predictably, casts a Jace and ramps it, at which point we enter the long grind. My Clique attacks his Jace, and I hold back the Elspeth because if he bounces the token, he can attack it low enough with the Mishras that it will die next turn. Considering I know he has another Jace ready, I certainly don’t want to lose the Elspeth (because at that point I’d be all in on Clique surviving).
He retaliates by Brainstorming with Jace and running both Mishras in. On my turn, Clique kills his Jace, and I’m now free to land the Elspeth, knowing full well that with the Mishra’s in play as viable outs to it and my Clique neutralizing his other Jace for the moment, he can’t risk Moat coming down next turn. He can only come in with two 2/2s due to mana constraints (Elspeth on 3).
The turn after, he Brainstorms and drops another Mishra but doesn’t have the mana to use it to pump while I want to keep the Clique around to make sure he can’t Jace again and allow Elspeth to fall to 2, once more chumping with the Soldier. I retaliate by casting Squadron Hawk, keeping the others in hand because I also have a Snapcaster (with a Brainstorm in the yard). I dearly want to hawkcestral right now but am stymied by his own Snapcaster and the Extraction in his yard.
He has a sixth land the turn after and attacks with all three Mishras, and I decline to block with my Hawk. This is once more because I need to play around his Snapcaster. If my Hawks are extracted, it will be impossible for me to keep the Elspeth alive against his Mishras in the long run, and as mentioned before I’m planning to grind this game out with Elspeth. Now that I have a Hawk to threaten Jace with, though, I feel free to finally trade my Clique for one of his three Mishras, and the Soldier chumps a second, leaving Elspeth at one loyalty.
Luckily he decides to Snapcaster post-combat to Extract my Cliques, leaving me free to Hawkcestral of off my own Snapcaster before deploying another Hawk. He attacks with his Snapcaster and a single Mishra (so as to be able to pump it with the other), but the Hawkcestral has finally given me a Swords to Plowshares so I kill his Mishra, and Snapcaster trades for a Soldier. He then deploys a Geist of Saint Traft, but it’s too little too late. When he attacks again next turn, my Snapcaster eats his Geist, and a Hawk plus my new Soldier gang up on his last Mishra, another Hawk keeping the Angel at bay.
Now that the field is finally under control and with him running out of cards in hand, I land a Jace, and my planeswalker buddies sit comfortably behind a defense line of Birds and Soldiers. Sadly time is called before I can turn the dominant board into an actual win, and I get my three points for going 1:0.
I think this game is a good example of how powerful information is in Magic. The fact that we both knew roughly which cards the other had available and that we both knew we knew (I’ll stop here) allowed me to pretty much create a script for the rest of the game. The most amusing thing, to me, is that Moat won me this game without ever hitting the stack. Without the leverage I gained from its threat value, my Elspeth would never have resolved, and I would have been totally reliant on my Clique staying alive to neutralize his Jaces (because Moat or no Moat, an active Jace still wins him the game).
Maybe I could have just run out the Moat, traded it for his Force and been done with all the complicated plays, but if I do that, I open myself up to losing to topdecked cards that I can still adapt to if I keep the threat of Moating alive.
If he allows the Moat to resolve and draws a Swords, his Jace kills me (because FoW handles the Elspeth). If he draws another counter, neither Moat nor Elspeth resolve, and I just lose the race to the Assembly Workers or to Jace (bouncing Clique and countering it on the way back down). By holding back the Moat, I forced him to let the Elspeth resolve, which established a safe threat against his Jaces (again, the prime objective in any control mirror).
Once the Elspeth was in play, on the other hand, the situation changed. With Elspeth and my other spells already stabilizing the board, there was no value for me in getting the Moat countered as long as it neutralized his Force (and another blue card) anyway. Instead I could just grind card advantage until, at some point, he’d be forced to either use the Force on something other than Moat, allowing me to lock up the game with the Legends enchantment as soon as he did, or he would simply run out of resources to fuel the Force with in the first place, netting me a free card in the long run.
Round 3: Andreas Krauß with Punishing Maverick
I win the roll.
Game 1:
I Swords his turn-one Mother, but he resolves an early Stoneforge Mystic for Sword of Fire and Ice and deploys that. Soon the Sword puts a ton of pressure on me while I struggle a little finding my fourth land for the Moat in my hand. After he connects for the first time, a Hawkcestral helps me refill, and I start chumping the sworded guy with Hawks before I finally find a land to drop the Moat.
His ground force stymied, he continues his offense with Birds of Paradise (carrying the Sword, obviously), holding a Scryb Ranger in reserve. I’m still tight on mana but slowly wrench control from him between chumps and cantripping for removal when I unnecessarily tap out of double blue for the counterspell in my hand against his empty hand. I obviously die to his topdecked Zenith into Pridemage (justice!).
Maverick can be tough pre-board sometimes because you don’t have enough removal to kill everything they play, making Moat your general endgame plan. If they find the Pridemage in time (and enough Zeniths to draw out your countermagic), you generally just die, which is exactly what happened, aside from me misplaying to make it unnecessary for him to fight through my counters first.
Sideboarding:
– 3 Spell Snare
– 1 Counterspell
– 2 Vendilion Clique
– 1 Elspeth, Knight Errant
+1 Enlightened Tutor
+2 Wrath of God
+3 Path to Exile
+1 Back to Basics
Post-board, the basic plan against Maverick becomes much more straight forward. Seeing as they have Krosan Grip, relying on Moat isn’t an acceptable plan anymore so instead you overload on removal and simply trade with everything they play while using your card-advantage engines to pull you ahead in the meantime.
Spell Snares are mediocre against Maverick as are Cliques as pseudo-Duress. Elspeth is fine, but my curve is getting too high, and she doesn’t fight a developed Maverick-board all that well. Finally Force of Will has to stay in simply because otherwise I can never tap out because of what Choke will do to me.
Back to Basics is the best out I have to Punishing Fire, not to mention it’s insane against a deck with so few basics. Enlightened Tutor is a solid split card that is either Moat, an answer to Choke (the most important card in the matchup), or another Back to Basics, whichever is necessary. Why the removal comes in should be obvious.
Game 2:
He has a very slow draw, and his few early creatures all die to my spot removal, leaving only a Jitte in play. I see why he has been doing so little when he can double Red Elemental Blast my Jace and the Force I use to protect it. After this, he ends up keeping a single card in hand while more removal trades for more creatures, and I pull ahead with Hawkcestrals. I’m quite sure his one card is a Krosan Grip simply because that’s the only thing he wouldn’t have played yet. When he casts a Knight of the Reliquary at five mana, I Oblivion Ring it to draw out the Krosan Grip (which works), and the Moat I’ve been slowrolling finally gets to lock him out while Jace already is moving towards ultimate.
After two long and grinding games—Maverick is nearly as resilient as a true control deck as far as game length is concerned—we’re low on time, so I decide I’ll probably need more of a clock and change my plan accordingly:
Sideboarding:
-3 Spell Snare
-3 Counterspell
-1 Moat (because with Grips around, Moat is far from the best insurance anyway, and I want the Elspeth back so I want to cut another four-drop)
+1 Enlightened Tutor
+2 Wrath of God
+3 Path to Exile
+1 Back to Basics
Game 3:
Again my removal trades for his guys, but a Jitte resolves, which is when he Zeniths up his trump card: Silhana Ledgewalker. While removal can’t touch that, it easily trades for a Hawk, so that’s what I drop. I Hawkcestral once and start pecking him for one a turn while my second Hawk holds back the Ledgewalker (as he can’t keep anything else on the board through my removal, he’s not particularly interested in trading it away for just two Jitte counters).
Caught in this stalled board position, I soon start to bury him in card advantage but have to sweep my Hawks and a Clique away at some point with Wrath of God while ramping a Jace.
At that point, it’s clear I can’t kill him with damage, and we’re running out of time. I only get Jace up to 13 loyalty on the second extra turn while he is empty-handed. Aware that there is nothing he can do to win anymore, he correctly keeps the Knight of the Reliquary he draws in hand so that my ultimate will leave him with a single card left to draw on the final extra turn.
Don’t you just hate it when that happens? A single turn cycle turns the match from a win into a draw.
So on my turn, I start to think. How can I still win? Do you see it? Check the decklist above again if you want.
There is only one way left for me to win, and it’s quite the long shot. I have to get him to concede. There is only one way to even try: ultimate Jace and then Clique him (a card I still have to find using my two cantrips in hand) when his library is empty because he has drawn the Knight.
I start off my turn by ultimating, followed by confidently casting one of my cantrips. I hit the Clique off the first Ponder, take it, and pass. During his draw step, after he’s drawn the Knight, I Clique him, giving him the “gotcha” look—praying that none of the observers ruins my game by blurting out something stupid like “does that work?” He looks at my Clique, the Knight in his hand, then at his empty library and … concedes the game. Hell yeah!
Now, I know this play is probably going to stir up a ton of controversy in the comments, especially because this wasn’t the finals of some big money event but just our little local tournament. Is it right to steal games with Jedi Mind tricks in such a comparatively casual environment?
Clearly, to me the answer is yes. First, how is this really different from the Hail Mary attack in Limited the turn before you’d die when you just attack with everything and hope they scoop—would you think that play is bad form even at a Prerelease?
Second, the reason I absolutely prefer to play Magic in a tournament setting instead of any other way is that you’re always playing to win in any way you legally can. The competition is a huge aspect of what makes Magic fun to me, and if I didn’t play like I meant it, I’d be ruining my fun.
More importantly, though, I’ve lost my fair share of games to mind tricks, bluffs, and tricky rules interactions I didn’t really understand or know about, often pulled by good friends of mine. I know what it feels like. The moment you realize you were suckered into throwing away the game, it hurts momentarily, but I can never stop admiring the sheer beauty of the intricate play that got me. These impossible moments are one of the big things that make Magic great. Even better, I leave every situation in which I was bluffed or suckered as a much better player than before—while I forget much of what happened during games, the moments someone really got me are crystal clear in my mind. I won’t fall for that kind of trick ever again!
Looking at it this way, I’d much rather be losing games to mind tricks when I’m playing in a small field at my local game store than later at some much bigger tournament (and for the record, I told him how badly I’d gotten him once the result was reported).
Oh yeah, not to try and make myself look better than I actually am, there obviously is a very selfish reason to try to get there, too: Do you know how it feels to actually manage to pull off a bluff like that? It’s pretty sweet.
Round 4: Andreas Puhl with Reanimator
No more winning the die roll for me.
Game 1:
I keep double Island, Karakas, Oblivion Ring, Jace, Force of Will, and Spell Snare. He fetches for Underground Seas and casts cantrips on turns one and two so I peg him for ANT and play my second Island to threaten Counterspell.
He Careful Studies and Reanimates on his turn (damn, guessed wrong), Forcing my Force. Hello Mr. Jin-Gitaxias!
I nearly concede but decide to see if my Oblivion Ring gets there. When I drop Karakas and touch the Oblivion Ring to play it, I realize I’m an idiot and just tap the Karakas to bounce his Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur. He has a Blazing Archon in the yard from discarding after drawing seven and Exhumes it. I Spell Snare; he double Dazes me. Back on my turn, I finally draw into a cantrip, and it chains exactly the way it’s supposed to. Two Ponders, a Brainstorm, and a Preordain later, I’m at eight from two Archon attacks but still can’t find a Swords to save my life.
Another Ponder finally finds something useful: a Vendilion Clique. I Clique him (seeing lands and fatties), block the Archon, and bounce the Clique with Karakas. Now that I’ve solved the threat temporarily, my Preordain on the next turn obviously finds two Swords, and I kill the Archon. Clique takes his remaining ten life away.
Is Karakas insane or what? I mean I beat a one-sided draw-seven all thanks to it blanking just about every good threat in my opponent’s deck.
Sideboarding
– 4 Squadron Hawk
– 2 Moat
– 2 Oblivion Ring
– 1 Elspeth
– 1 Snapcaster Mage
+ 3 Surgical Extractions
+ 2 Spell Pierce
+ 1 Vendilion Clique
+ 3 Path to Exile
+ 1 Wrath of God
I only bring in one Wrath because I don’t know for sure if he has any shroud guys; otherwise the boarding and plan are obviously identical to round one.
Game 2: He Careful Studies on turn 1, discarding Inkwell and Verdant Catacombs (seems like he does have shroud guys). I have a sick hand with Force, Spell Snare, and Extraction as highlights. His turn-two is land, Reanimate, at which point I Extract the Inkwell (happy to be rid of the shroud fattie), seeing a hand of four more lands. That was a pretty unlucky Careful Study.
While he doesn’t do anything exciting (surprise, I know), I start cantripping soon enough and get Jace/Hawk online while he isn’t doing much. When his Thoughtseize reveals a hand with four counters, Extraction, and two StP effects, he scoops them up.
Both of my Reanimator opponents asked me after the match if I thought they had sideboarded correctly, and both handed me decks that had Show and Tell, Pithing Needle, and Echoing Truth in them, in addition to adjusted disruption and fattie selections. I think they were doing it wrong, though I’d be happy if some of the true Reanimator buffs could correct me if I am the one doing it wrong.
To me the whole point of Show and Tell being in the board of Reanimator is that it gives you something to board in for game two that takes few slots but answers every single kind of graveyard hate there is. Reanimator’s plan in game two should be to remain as fast as possible (so that you win as usual if they don’t draw hate) while having an out to the more ridiculous hate options by jamming a few Show and Tells.
I never board any specific anti-hate like bounce or Needle in game two and only use the full sideboard in game three to adjust once I know which hate they have. That has to be better than always diluting the deck, right?
Round 5: Karl Dang with B/W/G Loam Pox
Nope, still not winning the roll.
Game 1: This was one of the most grindy games I have ever played. Throughout it, I get Wasted, Sinkholed, Smallpoxed, and Vindicated repeatedly, always the turn before I can drop a fourth land to Jace (cantrips find me new lands, but he keeps drawing mana denial just in the nick of time). My opponent gets Liliana to work, assembles the Waste/Loam lock and is attacking my resources on every front. In the meantime, my trusty Hawks keep me from running out of actual cards in hand even between Liliana ramps and the Smallpoxes. My Swords and O-Rings keep his Kitchen Finks and Mishras under control for a long time, but at some point I run out of options. By the end of this game, I actually don’t have any mana-producing lands left in my deck and still only have three mana in play. I finally die to a Kitchen Finks that has been liberated from under an Oblivion Ring by Liliana’s ultimate.
Sideboarding:
-2 Moat
-1 Elspeth
-1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
-1 Force of Will
+2 Spell Pierce
+1 Enlightened Tutor
+1 Wheel of Sun and Moon
+1 Back to Basics
I’m pretty sure this isn’t the correct boarding plan for the matchup because Jace is just that good against them, and Force does the all-important job of protecting my lands early on. The idea behind doing what I did is to lower my curve at all costs to counteract his mana denial while having as many guys as possible to attack his planeswalkers (he played both Elspeth and Liliana).
I don’t bring in Surgical Extraction because his Loam engine isn’t that relevant (I have enough basics to not get Waste-locked), and Extractions don’t do anything if he doesn’t have a Loam. I still want the Wheel so that I have some answer if we’re going extremely late, and both Back to Basics and Enlightened Tutor obviously come in because there is no way he ever wins with B2B in play.
Game 2: Is the total anti-climax after a great game one. I resolve a turn-three Back to Basics after he’s tapped out from casting a Chalice for one, and he never does anything again.
Games like this one are why I just love playing a deck that can support B2B. The games it wins aren’t particularly fun, but making all your opponent’s lands into Lotus Petals sure is an efficient way of stealing games. Silver bullets in general obviously make for good sideboard cards, but they’re particularly good if they don’t hit a certain archetype but rather a certain kind of characteristic. Sacrificing room in the board in a format as diverse as Legacy on cards that dominate a certain matchup is often too much of a cost to be worth it, but something as widely applicable as Back to Basics is actually perfect to introduce a random win factor into your deck post-board. Not to mention it’s also an elegant solution to the whole Punishing Fire problem.
Game 3: Is much more interesting. He is land light but has Mox Diamond (turning a Maze into mana) to get out of that trouble. In the meantime, my countermagic slows down his mana denial, and I start a clock with Hawks and Cliques. My “threats” slowly beat him down to four life while Hawks trade for Smallpoxes and a Liliana, but he finally stabilizes the board with another Maze against my Clique after grinding through the full set of Hawks between Smallpoxes and Liliana activations (I also happen to be on only two mana but still have more waiting).
I think I’ve got him when I Snapcaster for no value during his end step but forget to upkeep Enlightened Tutor to find a blue card (the B2B) to fuel the FoW in my hand. The universe justly hands him a topdecked Smallpox that kills my second guy once again. He also casts two Kitchen Finks in a row, but it’s all in vain, as the Enlightened Tutor I didn’t use still saves the day by getting B2B to lock down his Maze (his mana is fine with two Mox Diamond). Soon after he succumbs to Clique beats.
Bonus Game 4: Feeling like the matchup should be in his favor, he asks if I want to play another post-board game, and I’m always up for playtesting against what I consider a tight, difficult, and also quite interesting matchup.
With the pressure gone, though, my memory of that game is a lot fuzzier than every other match I played. He starts to Loam early, but I have the Wheel of Sun and Moon to stop those shenanigans. Next I get to Spell Snare both a Sinkhole and a Smallpox on the way to resolving Jace. He doesn’t have the Vindicate, and Jace takes it away.
During the games, my opponent was constantly amazed by the amount of mana my twenty land deck coughed up (cantrips are sweet) and really appreciated how ridiculous Squadron Hawk is. Getting three cards for one, any three cards, is pretty busted and especially so against a deck that tries to grind you out. That being said, the first game is a testimony of how powerful Pox’s resource denial strategy actually is if it gets going. In spite of drawing a ton of extra cards and filtering every land possible out of the deck, my opponent managed to kill nearly every real land I played to strand me without any real shot at winning.
Game Over
And that’s it! Five rounds, 5:0, and I’ll be free rolling my tournaments for the foreseeable future. I would like to thank all of my opponents who provided both exciting games and valiant opposition. In this context I’d particularly like to thank Andreas Krauß, the unfortunate victim of my Jedi powers. It was pretty obvious from the look on his face that he was dejected at how I got him but didn’t let it influence his friendly manner in the slightest.
That’s it for today; if any of the subjects I touched on are particularly interesting to you, let me know, and I’ll see if there’s a whole article there. If you disagree with anything, think I’m a horrible human being, would like some clarification, or hated this article format (or loved it, for that matter), you know how the comments work. Until next time, remember that real Magic happens only while you’re slinging the cards.
Carsten Kötter