Feb 1st, ManaD HQ, Montreal, Canada
*bogle* *bogle*

The Think Tank, Jay’s Testing Group, New York, U.S.
So, we’re not going to Modern Masters in Las Vegas together? Why not? Visa issues, huh. How long do you have to stay over there? Ten months—man, that sucks. So, no GP Miami either, then.

Feb 6th, Jay’s Home, Hoorn, the Netherlands
“Hey guys, you know what we should play right now? Junk Reanimator!”

Think Tank: “Huh? Why? It’s not like Humaninator is doing that great or anything.”
Jay: “Exactly. People were playing some graveyard hate to combat that deck because it’s actually effective against it, but at most I’m seeing two [card]Rest in Peace[/card] in sideboards. That must be because people are playing Humaninator less, but it’s not like it’s not placing in dailies anymore, just not as often. It’s primed for a return.”
Think Tank: “Then why not play that deck? Why Junk Reanimator?”
Jay: “Because a Reanimator deck in the style of Kenji Tsumura is completely off the radar. Nobody has answers to [card]Craterhoof Behemoth[/card] right now. Plus, it’s not even being hurt that much by a [card]Rest in Peace[/card] if it comes. It can just play like Junk Midrange.”

Feb 8th,, ManaD HQ, Montreal, Canada
KYT : “Jay, where are you at?”
Jay: “Oh shit, I forgot to hand in an article last week”
Tink Tank: “Yeah Jay, when will you be writing articles again?”
Jay: “I’m not sure, I’ve been very busy with paperwork and trying to find an apartment for me and Christina to stay in. I haven’t had much time to actually play. Maybe I should write an article about how good Reanimator would be in this meta?”
Think Tank: “Don’t bother, Brad Nelson already published one today saying exactly that.”
Jay: *sadface*

Feb 15th, ManaD HQ, Montreal, Canada
*bogle* *bogle*

Team Hoonderd, Lansdaal, Korver, Hoorn, the Netherlands

Team HLK : Team Draft Testing Notes – Forcing a guild does not work with only 18 packs in the mix. Decks are short on playables if you’re not in the right colors. Hooking someone only to sink might work reasonably well. For example, if you open [card]Sunhome Guildmage[/card] and [card]Truefire Paladin[/card], don’t pass both hoping to let the two people after you fight over Boros. That second person is your teammate. Take the one you can splash easier, and pass only one of the uncommons. If the guy to your left stays in Boros because of it, and Boros is open to your right, he’ll only have one pack’s worth of good picks, and you’ll have two. Decks will be mediocre all around compared to a normal draft, but yours should be better.

Team HLK: Team Sealed Testing Notes – The good control decks seem way better than the good aggressive decks. Your Boros deck has to be pretty insane to beat a good Orzhov or Esper deck. Like in regular sealed, you need to go a little bigger. Play some five drops, and even a [card]Hellkite Tyrant[/card] is great. You need to be able to smash through decks that go bigger than you. Speaking of bigger: Simic is a lot better than you’re used to. It’s a lot easier to get a critical mass of evolve creatures when you get twelve packs rather than six.

Everybody has bombs, so be patient with your removal if you can be. If you’re playing the Orzhov control-mirror, don’t be afraid to board into an Esper deck with worse mana if you have some [card]Duskmantle Guildmage[/card]s and blue [card]Sage’s Row Denizen[/card]s. You and your opponent probably both have more removal than relevant creatures, so decking is a legitimate concern, especially when you have [card]Grisly Spectacle[/card]s destroying a [card]Wight of Precinct Six[/card] or other large bombs.

Because decks are more likely to have removal, feel free to leave [card]Holy Mantle[/card]s, [card]Madcap Skills[/card], and other auras on the sidelines, especially if you’re playing against the Orzhov or Dimir deck. Getting two-for-one’d is fairly bad when all the other cards trade—and they often will. The format is full of 2/2s and 1/4s that either trade or effectively trade (as they cancel each other out in combat), so two-for-ones are great. This is also a reason Simic is better here; the evolve creatures will outgrow other creatures.

The format seems to reward patience. Often taking a hit or two here and there won’t cost you much thanks to extort, or because it’ll allow you to find better trades later. If I have a bunch of 2/3s or 1/4s in my deck, I’m not trading my turn-two 2/2 for your turn-two 2/2 unless yours is a Guildmage or something else that’s more valuable than mine. Channel your inner Medina: don’t trade unless you’re getting value.

Feb 22nd, ManaD HQ, Montreal, Canada
KYT : “Jay? Hey, JAY?”
Jay: …
Jay: “You’d think moving into a new apartment gets easier if you’ve done it a few times, but having moved seven times in the last seven years I can assure you: it’s a b*tch every single time.”

March 1st, ManaD HQ, Montreal, Canada
“Goddamnit! I guess if you want something done right…”

(And that, folks, is why you get to thank me for having the Captain’s Log column)

March 10th, Grand Prix, Verona, Italy
*Reanimator wins*
Jay: “I sure wish I had the time to write that article a month ago…”

March 15th, Grand Prix LCQs, Utrecht, the Netherlands

A quick round-one loss after a mull to four in game one, and a fast start from the Gruul deck I was facing in game two, and the first LCQ was over before I knew it. My pool was bad, yes, and my Esper-splash-red deck wasn’t the prettiest, but it wasn’t that bad.

I decided to play another and built two decks out of the next pool: a very consistent Gruul deck with few bombs, and an Esper deck that was strong in control mirrors but weak against more aggressive Boros, Gruul, and Simic decks. I registered the Gruul deck and made it to the finals, switching in game-twos to Esper when needed. In the finals, I faced Nico Bohny with his Orzhov deck that splashed for Aurelia. His deck was better than my Gruul deck, and I flooded slightly in the second game with my Esper deck, leaving my team without the three byes we were hoping for.

March 16th, Grand Prix Utrecht, the Netherlands
HLK: “Wow, this pool is dreadful. Four [card]Razortip Whip[/card]s? Thank god we get to pass it to someone else. Is Conley Woods here? He might get some use out of it.”

Our actual pool was very good. We had Aurelia, [card]Boros Reckoner[/card], [card]Rubblebelt Raiders[/card] and enough Guildgates to cast them in our Naya deck; a Simic deck with [card]Master Biomancer[/card] and [card]Simic Manipulator[/card] that simply could not (and did not) lose; and an Orzhov deck with a Gideon and plenty removal. Sadly enough, poor draws and some bad luck led to our losing two rounds 1-2, after losing another round to a possibly even nuttier pool. At 3-3, we dropped when I found out the (foil) Gideon from my deck had gone missing. A judge told us we could buy a non-foil one from the dealer’s booth and continue playing (a non-foil even—the generosity!), but we were quite demoralized (and also out of contention for day two).

The lesson here? Watch your stuff? Nah… sometimes bad luck finds you, and all you can do is suck it up and try again, even when the whole world seems to be against you.

March 24th, Jay’s Home, Hoorn, the Netherlands
“What do you guys think about playing Peddle to the Metal again?”

Think Tank: “Explain.”
Jay: “Well, with everybody playing Reanimator right now, or Naya Blitz and other aggro decks to outrace Reanimator, don’t you think the Staticaster-Peddler combo is super good right now?

Reanimator doesn’t have many weaknesses, because it is very good at playing multiple roles. It major weakness that we can exploit is that it has very little removal. They might remove the combo with an [card]Angel of Serenity[/card], but we get to play four copies of one of the few cards that actually beats the Angel: [card]Olivia Voldaren[/card]. So, Staticaster-Peddler should just destroy them pre-board, right? After board they might have answers, but then we get to back up our [card]Rakdos’s Return[/card]s with [card]Tormod’s Crypt[/card]s. Also, we have maindeck [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s.”
Think Tank: “I just hate not drawing Staticaster together with Peddler…”
Jay: “Well, [card]Izzet Staticaster[/card] is really good in the matchup even without Peddler, gunning down their mana dorks so we can get to our good cards before they ‘Hoof us. And Peddler combines with Olivia and Huntmaster, too. Beating decks like Blitz seem easy if you ever get a Staticaster on the board, and since those decks are on the rise because of Reanimator’s dominance…”
Think Tank: “List?”
Jay:

[Deck title=”Staticaster-Jund by Jay Lansdaal”]
[Creatures]
3 Deathrite Shaman
4 Nightshade Peddler
4 Izzet Staticaster
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Olivia Voldaren
4 Thragtusk
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Faithless Looting
4 Farseek
2 Rakdos’s Return
4 Tracker’s Instinct
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Blood Crypt
1 Breeding Pool
2 Cavern of Souls
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Kessig Wolf Run
1 Overgrown Tomb
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Stomping Ground
3 Steam Vents
1 Watery Grave
3 Woodland Cemetery
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
3 Appetite for Brains
1 Deathrite Shaman
1 Duress
2 Tragic Slip
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Rolling Temblor
1 Rakdos’s Return
2 Slaughter Games
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

Think Tank: “What’s up with the Lootings? And the [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]s in the board?”
Jay: “The Lootings are there to help alleviate flooding a bit (you do play 26 lands), as well as to smooth out your draws some. It helps with some of the more awkward draws you can have with this deck (like double or triple Peddlers in hand). The Snapcasters are there against control. If you’ve ever played BUG in Modern, you
know how nice it is to play discard spell, Snapcaster, discard spell, and take all your opponent’s relevant cards.”
Think Tank: “You could just play fewer lands?”
Jay: “The deck is fairly mana-hungry, and combining [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] with deathtouch creatures is awesome, but you can’t exactly cut colored sources for it.”

March 25th, Jay’s Home, Hoorn, the Netherlands
“Damnit, Shunkov already wrote an article about the Peddler deck. Now what do I write about? I did put some more work into the manabase, so maybe I should just mention it in an article and provide a list…”

March 30th, Magic Think Tank, New York, US
“Check out Lewis Laskin’s Peddler deck murdering Reanimator on cam. So good.”

Jay: “Dammit, I can’t have Peddler win this Open. My article isn’t ready yet.”
Think Tank: “lol”

April 6th, Team Hoonderd, Lansdaal, Korver, Hoorn, the Netherlands

Team HLK: Standard Testing Notes – Reanimator remains the big bad guy in our fairy-tale standard. There are about ten decks that we wouldn’t feel embarrassed to take to the WMCQ. A wide-open format, but some decks are represented more than others. Junk Reanimator seems to be the biggest fish, followed by Naya Blitz. The third most popular deck seems to be Esper Control, but it is a deck that often wins only by small margins, which can be bothersome over the course of a long tournament. The midrange Esper that Simon Goertzen played seems like a better choice, with the full set of [card]Lingering Souls[/card] and Sorins to back them up.

Naya Blitz can be fought reasonably easily by playing enough removal spells. However, not many decks can afford to do so. Jund can, but its matchup against Junk Reanimator is simply not good enough. Other decks still skimp on spot removal, even after board, which makes it near impossible for them to stumble and still win. If they do trip, and Blitz has a reasonable draw, the game will be over before they can stabilize. For the mirror, an [card]Electrickery[/card] or two can do great work in games two and three.

A deck that’s good against the two top decks, but that’s a risky choice because of its not-so-great matchup against control decks, is [card]Fog[/card] Control. Playing a version with eight [card]Fog[/card]s and a bunch of card draw to find them doesn’t seem great, as [card]Fog[/card]s themselves are not a game winner. However, in this creature combat oriented format, [card]Fog[/card] is almost a full [card]Time Walk[/card], for one mana less even. A couple of standard formats back, there was a UG deck that played a bunch of Planeswalkers and [card]Time Warp[/card]s to ramp them towards almost unbeatable ultimates. That is something we can do in Standard too. Consider this list:

[Deck title=”Fog-Control by Jay Lansdaal”]
[Creatures]
3 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Planeswalkers]
2 Gideon, Champion of Justice
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
[/Planeswalkers]
[Spells]
1 Azorius Charm
4 Fog
2 Blind Obedience
4 Farseek
2 Clinging Mists
1 Dissipate
4 Supreme Verdict
4 Sphinx’s Revelation
2 Urban Evolution
[/Spells]
[Land]
4 Breeding Pool
1 Forest
1 Island
3 Glacial Fortress
3 Hallowed Fountain
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Godless Shrine
1 Watery Grave
3 Sunpetal Grove
3 Temple Garden
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
1 Nephalia Drownyard
2 Dispel
1 Azorius Charm
1 Clinging Mists
3 Dissipate
1 Bramblecrush
2 Witchbane Orb
1 Jace, Memory Adept
3 Terminus
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

[card]Sphinx’s Revelation[/card] and [card]Urban Evolution[/card] keep the action flowing, so while we have “only” six [card]Fog[/card]s, our two big card drawers make sure we always have one when we need it, and the [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]s make sure we have a second. Gideon is your big finisher here, often growing absurdly large before a [card]Supreme Verdict[/card] wipes the board and the Champion swings in for lethal in one or two strikes.

Team HLK: “So, Jay, what are you playing?”
Jay: “Funny, I’ve been yelling for weeks what we should play, but now that push comes to shove, I’m not sure. I could use another weekend of results.”

In the next article: A look at exactly those results, a short recap of the first WMCQ in the Netherlands (spoiler alert: I did not win, nor did my teammates), the lessons learned there and a quick outlook to the next WMCQ.

Glad to be back,

Jay Lansdaal
iLansdaal on Twitter and MTGO