by Jon Metzger

Jon Metzger is just starting out as a competitive player. He discovered Magic during the Shards block and started playing competitively when Zendikar came out. He's not good at the game yet, but he's learning as quickly as he can, with a trip to US Nationals in his first attempt as his biggest accomplishment so far. He plays twice a week at Fantasy Games in South Bend, Indiana, which is an awesome shop to play at.  This past weekend, he added to his list of accomplishments with a top 8 at States.

States was an interesting tournament for me. On the one hand, I was looking forward to having an easier level of competition after finding myself well out of my league at US Nationals earlier this year (2-5 drop). On the other hand, I vastly prefer closed metagames where the best decks are well established and you know what to attack to open metagames where there could be anything out there. I am not an innovative deck-building genius – I like tweaking a known deck to improve specific, planned for match-ups with known quantities.

I’ll run through a quick explanation of why I chose the deck I did then a run-through of the tournament with a couple humorous moments. Expect a ridiculous amount of misplays and terrible decks, on my side and my opponents. Learn why sometimes Mana Leak reads “Counter Target Spell, no matter how much mana they have”, and sometimes it doesn’t. Thrill to the excitement of Squadron Hawk beatdown, learn how much Rashad Miller hates Linvala and learn why playing Legacy is apparently essential to playing Standard correctly. Also, there may or may not be a Mel Gibson cameo.
 

Building the deck

Once the full spoiler hit, I started working on basic deck ideas and bouncing around ideas on Facebook with the guys from the local store. After trying out several brand new archetypes and quickly discarding them in play-testing, I knew I was going to run with some variation/update to an established deck (see the first paragraph).

The generally accepted opinion seemed to be that there were four decks that survived intact and could be expected to do well: Mono-R, U/W Control, Mono-G Eldrazi Titan, and Valakut Titan. I went through each of them and discarded them for various reasons.

Mono-R: I couldn’t find a build that seemed to actually work if you didn’t open with turn 1 Goblin Guide, despite about three days worth of trying. I really wanted this one to work.

U/W Control: It’s not my style (I live to attack), it seemed to have a rough match-up with the Titan decks and I didn’t feel like I could accurately predict what I might be trying to control.

Eldrazi Titan: It seems to me like a strictly worse version of Valakut Titan – what the decks are trying to do, Valakut does better and from more diverse angles.

Valakut Titan: This one seemed to me to be the best deck. I also really like the way the deck plays and respect its raw power. However, I hadn’t played it that much before the rotation, and I knew that most of the Valakut players at States would be people who’d been gunning with it for a while. I don’t want to play the ‘best deck mirror’ against people who all have a built-in playing time edge against me. Same reason I never played much Jund last year.

Since I didn’t like any of the new builds I’d tried, that left one established strategy, which fortunately was one I’m pretty fond of and have some experience with: Fauna Shaman/Vengevine. I briefly toyed with some Dredge-vine type builds but none of them really seemed to work out. That meant I was definitely Green, and almost assuredly three colors to give myself the most powerful tool-set. Birds/Cobra and all of the lands we have available makes G/x/x a very solid manabase.

My choice for the second color was made early – Jace and Mana Leak are amazingly powerful and fit nicely in the deck for a lot of reasons, and I liked Trinket Mage into Memnite as Vengevine recursion.

My first stab at the third color was Red, primarily for Sparkmage and Raging Ravine. I played a RUG list at a local four-round tournament the Wednesday before States, and while I loved the G/U, Sparkmage was getting sided out quickly against the best decks and Ravine felt too slow (and ineffective vs plant tokens).

Josh Lewis, one of the best local players, suggested I try Bant, so I went back to the drawing board and looked at BUG and Bant. Basically, Green and Blue provide the core of a Shaman deck to me – aggression, resilience and timely counterspells – what you’re looking for out of the other colors is ways to answer other creatures, ways to recur your Vengevines, a good manland and solutions to problems you anticipate.

I anticipated that aside from the four decks I listed at first, the most popular (successful) decks would be other Vengevine decks, Boros aggro, and Elves. For other Vengevine decks/Elves, the ultimate trump card in the match-up is Linvala, not Cunning Sparkmage (since Linvala beats Sparkmage and turns off all of the elves instead of just one elf at a time). For Mono-R and Boros, the ultimate trump card is Baneslayer Angel – if you don’t know why, you haven’t been playing Magic lately. (The other answer, Kor Firewalker, is not acceptable any more due to Masticore and Koth). Given that, as cool as the BUG lists looked, I knew I wanted to play Bant for the pair of Trump Angels. Celestial Colonnade is also a great manland for fighting U/W Control or to fly over a wall of plant tokens.

There were two last minute all-star additions to the deck on Friday – the first was Garruk, inspired by Alexander Shearer’s article about BUG-vine on ChannelFireball – I realized that untapping two mana a turn to represent Mana Leak and giving my Vengevines +3/+3 and trample were exactly what I wanted to be doing in the current format.

The second was a response on Facebook to my initial list from Mikey Tabler: “No love for Squadron Hawk?” I had initially been heavy on the Trinket Mage instead, since the 2-mana for a 1/1 body of Hawk had turned me off. However, I trust Mikey, so I trimmed some Mages and other stuff and got the Hawks in, which was good, because they were all-stars all day.

Enough blathering: here’s the list I played – the sideboard is complete trash that I threw together the morning of the tournament – I post it for amusement value only, as I do not recommend it. It’s literally the worst sideboard I’ve ever brought to a tournament.

4 Birds of Paradise
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
4 Squadron Hawks
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Frost Titan
1 Trinket Mage
1 Memnite

4 Mana Leak
3 Garruk Wildspeaker
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Brittle Effigy

4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Celestial Colonnade
1 Stirring Wildwood
4 Misty Rainforest
3 Verdant Catacombs
1 Sunpetal Grove
5 Forest
2 Islands
1 Plains
 

Sideboard:
2 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
2 Baneslayer Angel
3 Mind Control
3 Refraction Trap
1 Molten-Tail Masticore
1 Chimeric Mass
1 Sunblast Angel
1 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Tajuru Preserver

Yeah, I know, I already said the sideboard was horrible. I also should have fit an Eldrazi Monument or two in somewhere.

Anyway, my teammate Jim Baker and I drove down to Indy Friday night. Jim was pretty set on a U/B control list he and a couple of the other guys had brewed up Thursday night, and he spent most of the drive texting the other guys going over the last slots and the board.

We crashed with my friends from college, Lee and Amber. They don’t have any idea how Magic works, but they’re awesome hosts and great to drink with. We had a couple beers, Jim and I did some last minute testing with a Grand Architect-Lodestone Golem list we both wanted to try (scrapped it as too inconsistent, though it does have some god draws), and we hit the sack around 1 AM in the morning.

I woke up at 7:30 AM or so, started brewing some coffee, and threw together the Worst Sideboard Ever©. Jim took forever to get out of bed but he eventually staggered into wakefulness and we hit the tournament site around 9:30 AM. The quote of the morning definitely belonged to Amber: “Jim, would you also like to rub your testicles on my husband for good luck? It’s okay with me.” 

Running Good

It was announced that we had 140 players so we were going 8 rounds of swiss. When I sat down to the first round, I had literally never cast a Squadron Hawk in constructed play – little did I know it would become my favorite card in the deck by the end of the day.

First round, I played against what I can only assume was a relatively new player playing some sort of R/U/G ramp deck that I assume was based on the Comet Storm deck from San Juan (I assume he was inexperienced in a large part because I had to call a judge for a ruling after he fetched a forest with his Scalding Tarn).

I rolled over him relatively quickly the first game but he got way ahead on mana in game two. I was fortunately able to JaceSeal an Avenger to the bottom of his deck before Jace died, and he never drew any action cards. I wasn’t drawing much either and my lone Masticore and Bird were facing down an army of Cobras, Oracles and Ravines, though the Masticore was doing a good job pinging them away.

With about 10 minutes left in the round, I was at 9 life to his 10 when he untapped. I had a Mana Leak and a meaningless creature in my hand that I was holding to discard for Masticore. He had (I think) a Cobra, an Oracle and two Ravines, one of which had three counters on it already. He also had two cards in hand, one of which he’d just drawn, and the other of which I was pretty sure was a land he’d been sandbagging. He went into the tank for a bit then played a land, cracked a pair of fetchlands to go to 8 and animated both of his Ravines. I went into the tank in response then decided that I was going to let him attack and chump the big Ravine with my Bird.

My thought process was that I would need to ‘core whatever he left back to block then swing through, put him to 4 and ‘core him again for lethal on my turn. The only way he could get lethal through would be if he had just drawn a Lightning Bolt. He declared his attacks and swung with everything. At this point, the equation completely changed, since I didn’t need to ‘core a blocker anymore (and he’d helpfully fetch-landed himself to 8). I could ‘core his smaller Ravine, chump his larger Ravine with the Birds, and go to 5, well out of Bolt range. Unfortunately, I had already made my whole plan and didn’t update it to account for the fact that he hadn’t kept a blocker back. I went ahead with my original plan, chumped the big Ravine, and went to 1. He then tapped his Mountain and showed me the Bolt – I glanced at my open Blue mana, my Mana Leak in hand, and his three untapped lands, and was kicking myself and getting ready to move to game three. He then asked me “Do you have the Mana Leak”? I looked up, tapped 1U and showed him the Leak, going through the motions. Then, instead of paying for it, he said “nice job, good game.” and picked up his cards. I sat there in stunned silence while he filled out the slip 2-0 in my favor then I signed it, picked my stuff up and turned it in. I guess that makes my misplay look kind of trivial in comparison. Must Be Nice©, right?

Second round, I was paired against one of the better players from South Bend, John McGuane. John doesn’t play that often, and earlier in the week I’d been telling him he needed to play more so that I could improve my 0-2 lifetime record against him. He was running U/W Control, and as soon as he sat down he began bitching about how I was pretty much destined to get my first win against him here and what a terrible time it would be for that to happen.

The first game I lost on turn 3 when I used my mana acceleration to cast the Vengevine in my hand instead of the Jace. The game went on quite a few more turns but that was the play that lost me the game. The second game I was able to Mind Control his Baneslayer and kill him with it, which was nice. The third game was back and forth, but I eventually top decked a Squadron Hawk and was able to out-attrition him as he got mana flooded. I won the game on turn 5 of extra turns by animating my Celestial Colonnade and then activating Garruk’s ultimate when he was at 6 life. He ended up going 6-2 and coming in 9th.

Third round, I played against Phil McLaury, who I had roomed with at Nationals. Phil was also on U/W Control, though I think his list was relatively out of date. I recurred a bunch of Vengevines, got my Jaces down before his and beat him down pretty handily despite his side-boarded Linvala. I was especially happy with the Chapin-endorsed play of “Brainstorm 2 Hawks away, play the third one, hey look! Jace draws 3 now!”

In between the third and fourth rounds, there was a lunch break, so a bunch of us went across the street and chowed down on pizza slices and pop. Definitely a nice change of pace from the usual “no lunch for you!” Magic tournament ethos.

Fourth round, I got paired against Rashad Miller. Rashad is a gentleman and a scholar, and I felt a little bad playing Linvala on turn 3 against his Elf deck. Game two I brought in two more Linvala and the two Baneslayer, since he only had four Plummets he could bring in. I hit a turn 3 Baneslayer which Plummeted away but a couple turns later, I hit Linvala and stabilized behind a wall of Hawks, Mythic Rare plants, and 3/3 beast tokens at 3 life until I stuck the second Baneslayer and rode the angels to victory.

Round five was versus Boros Aggro, and also featured my only Koth sighting of the tournament. The first game was nip and tuck, but he didn’t have enough burn and my Vengevines were able to come back enough times (assisted by awesome chump-blocking duty from Hawks) to put him away. The second game, he opened on Goblin Guide and gave me a land first turn. I played a Colonnade, exaggeratedly checked my hand to see that I had 8 cards, and discarded a Vengevine. Second turn I played a Squadron Hawk, searched up some more and was shocked to discover that I once again had too many cards in hand. Guess I’ll have to discard this Vengevine, huh? As soon as I hit 4 mana for the double-Hawk, it was academic. Must Be Nice©, right?

At this point, I was looking at one more win and a double-draw into top 8. I’d dropped one game all day (first game vs McGuane which I should have won if I’d played right) and was running amazingly hot. I was feeling pretty good but was mainly focused on staying steady and taking it one match at a time. I went outside and walked up and down for a bit while chain-smoking to keep myself relaxed.

Sixth round, I finally played against Valakut Ramp for the first time all day, which was not something I was really looking forward to. David Tidd (who ended up winning the whole thing and apparently was also Indiana State Champ back in 2004) was the opposing pilot. First game, I hit an early Garruk and played slow, keeping Mana Leak up almost every turn. However, he apparently had kept a “lots of land and a titan” hand, so he just kept playing a land and passing the turn. He finally stuck his Titan, which I exiled with Brittle Effigy, and I was feeling pretty good. According to my friends who were watching from behind him, the subsequent Avenger and Titan he played were both top-decks, which was a little annoying (not sure if that was the exact 3 turn sequence, but it was something similar). Still, I suppose after running so good, I deserved to give a little back.

The second game was a blow-out – I kept a hand with good lands, a Bird, a Cobra, and I think a Vengevine, but I never drew anything else meaningful and he hit an early Titan and blew me away. David was a classy and awesome opponent, and I’m very happy for him claiming his second title at States.

Sitting at 5-1 going into the second to last round, I was balanced on a knife’s edge. The possibility of going into the last round still needing to play was not something I wanted to face after starting 5-0, so I really wanted to win this next round. I remember sitting next to Josh Lewis, who was 4-1-1 and still alive, just muttering to myself “anything but Titan . . . anything but Titan”.

I ended up being paired against a guy running GerryT’s U/R Frost Titan deck. I’m really curious to see what that match-up would have been like, as it looks like a really cool deck. However, I never got to find out, as he drew a total of 7 lands in both games. I didn’t have the best hands ever, and he kept burning my creatures, but when your opponent runs that many high drops and misses their third land drop for multiple turns, Squadron Hawks eventually get there almost by themselves. Normally when you get a bye in round 7, it’s because you should have dropped a few rounds ago, not because you’re about to ID into the top 8. Kind of an unpleasant way to win, but I was willing to take it. I don’t remember my opponent’s name, but he handled it with class, so props to him.

Last round, I IDed with an undefeated Elves player and went over to watch Josh Lewis battle it out with my U/R opponent for the last slot in the top 8. They ended up finishing their second match as time was called – neither one of them was willing to concede, so they ended up drawing themselves into 17th and 18th, which was pretty unfortunate.

In the top 8, I was paired against Donnie Wise running U/W Control. I blew him out in classic style game one. The match-up worked exactly like it was supposed to with multiple waves of hasty plants backed up by planeswalkers and counter-magic. Game two, he opened with a Celestial Colonnade; I had mulled into a hand of Plains, Catacombs, Rainforest, Cobra, Shaman, and a meaty four drop (Jace or Vengevine, I forget which). I played the Plains, planning to save the fetchlands for Cobra shenanigans. He dropped an Island and a Leonin Arbiter. Let me tell you, that card is a beating against this deck. Before I drew a non-fetch land, he’d dropped a second one. I conceded that game after a few turns of Hate Cat beatdown, never having cast a spell. Apparently I don’t play enough Legacy, otherwise I would have learned to “Always lead with the fetchland”. Lesson learned, friends, lesson learned.

Game three, he mulliganed to 5, muttering the whole time about how bad the match-up was for him, and at least he’d get to go home early. I don’t know if it was something he does for his own mental health, or if he was purposely trying to lull me into bad plays. Either way, I opened hot with a Fauna Shaman searching up a pair of Vengevines and started to lay into him. I then proceeded to punt the game away, lulled into overconfidence by his demeanor, the mull to 5, the good match-up and my overwhelming board presence. I went ahead and fetched up a third Vengevine instead of a Squadron Hawk. Note the delicious irony – Hawks carry me all day into the top 8, but in a moment of high drama, I spurn them, going for the glamorous 4/3 Mythic over the humble 1/1 Common. Of course I pay the price for my hubris. His subsequent Day of Judgement, followed by Tec-Edging and Volition Rein-ing all of my non-green mana let him steal the game and advance on to the eventually take second.

*Interesting note – I am now 0-2 lifetime against Magic players named Donnie. Donnie Peck obliterated me at Nationals; coincidentally, he was also playing U/W Control at the time*

I kicked myself over punting away a favorable match in the top 8, congratulated Donnie on the nice play, picked up my sweet top 8 playmat and went over to collect my 24 packs of Scars with the rest of the quarterfinals losers (the nice lady tried to give 5th-8th a whole box before we pointed her to the prize list sitting in front of her and explained that we were only top 8, not top 4).

23 of the prize packs were of little note, but one of them was Mythic-Foil Mythic (Opal + Foil Skittles the Dragon), so that was nice. We crashed at Lee and Amber’s again, knocking off some scotch, beer and meatloaf then watched Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (hey, there’s that Mel Gibson cameo – hi Mel!). Line of the night, again from Amber: “Jim, you’re getting your non-Top 8 fingers all over Metzger’s playmat!”

In conclusion, if you’re going to run Vengevine, Bant is definitely my recommendation. Linvala and Baneslayer are massive trumps over the most popular creature decks, and Jace + Mana Leak give you a very good match-up against control. I think with the addition of some Eldrazi Monuments, the Titan match-up could be improved, though it still won’t be great. However, U/W is currently the deck to beat, with Titan secondary, based on the results so far. Here’s what I would run if you want to run Bant-vine in a 5K or FNM in the next couple of weeks:

4 Birds of Paradise
3 Lotus Cobra (doesn’t need that much acceleration, and we’re cutting back on fetchlands a little bit)
4 Fauna Shaman
4 Vengevine
4 Squadron Hawk (seriously, so good in this deck. Perfect role player. You don’t even want Trinket Mage/Memnite in the deck anymore)
1 Linvala
2 Molten-Tail Masticore (you haven’t truly lived until you’ve discarded a Vengevine on your upkeep to Masticore – Hawks also make great ‘core fodder, and the direct damage, regen and 4/4 for 4 are all awesome in this deck)
2 Sea Gate Oracle (fills in the 3 drop slot if you’re not accelerating to 4, good card draw/filtering, immune to Pyroclasm)

4 Mana Leak
2 Journey to Nowhere (you need something to deal with Wurmcoil Engine, enemy Linvalas and Leonin Arbiter; also not bad against other Titans if they’re not packing enchantment removal)
2 Garruk Wildspeaker (I’d run 3, but I don’t think you can afford any more 4 drops)
2 Jace, the Mindsculptor
1 Eldrazi Monument

4 Razorverge Thicket (gives this deck so much more of a cushion in the manabase)
4 Celestial Colonnade
1 Stirring Wildwood
1 Sunpetal Grove
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Evolving Wilds
4 Forest
3 Island
2 Plains (we’re cutting one fetch-land and boosting our non-green basics – there’s too many Tec Edges and Volition Reins running around trying to hate on Valakut and Eldrazi Temple, so we need a few more U/W basics to help make sure we can cast all of our spells if they’re going after our lands) 

Sideboard:
2 Linvala
2 Baneslayer Angel
1 Tajuru Preserver
2 War Priest of Thune (Flores’ Pyromancer’s list is going to take off, and Titan Ramp leans heavily on slipping a Khalni Heart in under our counter-magic).
3 Refraction Trap (good answer to Bolt/burn/Clasm)
1 Eldrazi Monument
4 Flashfreeze

Other cards that might be worth investigating: Mindbreak Trap (immune to Summoning Trap), Venser, Sylvan Ranger, and Stoneforge/something.

Good luck and run good! 

Afterword:

I tried to keep the report light and amusing, since really dry tournament reports are very boring. However, I would like to talk seriously about the first round Mana Leak concession by my opponent. Looking back on that, I'm not sure if my accepting the concession there was the right thing to do. Obviously the rules of the game don't obligate me to tell him to pay for my Mana Leak, or to refuse to accept his concession. I don't think what I did was wrong or even strictly speaking unsporting – it's just that it wasn't the best thing I could do. I've written before on my blog about how much I admire the story of Kenji putting a counter on top of his opponent's deck to remind him to pay for his slaughter pact, and how I would like to play that way myself.

However, in the heat of the moment, staring at the difference between starting 1-0 or having to start shuffling for a 3rd game with less than 10 minutes on the clock, I took the easy way out.

On the one hand, I'm glad I did, as top 8ing States was a lot of fun and I had a great tournament. On the other hand, by taking the easy win there, I feel like I was less than the best possible representative of the game, and I didn't push and challenge myself to win that 3rd game with tighter play. In the end, I'm not sure what I'd do if I could do it over again – lofty ideals are something I want to strive for, but is a small thing like that worth giving up one of only 8 rounds you get to make the top 8? How far should you go to be a good sportsman? Obviously you should never cheat or mis-represent the game state, but you can't correct all of your opponent's misplays or allow 'take-backs' in a competitive-level event. In the end, I'm still not sure. I think I probably should have pointed out the situation and asked if he still wanted to concede, but I'm not sure if I'd have the guts to do it. I clearly didn't Saturday.

Kar Yung Tom

Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.