Greetings! It’s definitely been a long time since I last wrote a tournament report for ManaDeprived but I am happy to be back and excited to share my tournament stories with you all!
I would first like to start by apologizing for the delay in this article coming out as it was in the works for almost 2 months now since the end of PT Honolulu. After coming back from the PT, I immediately booked it over to GP Kobe the following weekend and GP Lille 2 weeks later. After Top 32ing the PT, I was unable to money finish day 2 in GP Kobe and didn’t make it very far in day 1 of Lille. But I digress.
What I really want to be talking about today is the deck that myself and a number of other Canadians have used since the release of Dark Ascension to some great success.
Before we get into the nitty gritty, I’ll present you with the deck that Andrew Noworaj, with the help of Adam Yurchik, more or less put together for me, the night before day 1 of PT Honolulu while we tested different variations on Naya decks. Also below it I presented my original notes and thoughts about this, right after the PT.
[deck title=The HOPA Brew]
[Land]
8 Forest
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Gavony Township
[/Land]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Strangleroot Geist
2 Porcelain Legionnaire
4 Blade Splicer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Sword of War and Peace
3 Garruk Relentless
4 Oblivion Ring
1 Overrun
2 Green Sun’s Zenith
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Ancient Grudge
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Celestial Purge
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Dismember
1 Overrun
1 Mortarpod
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Notes on this deck:
- The deck name HOPA Brew came from a store in Honolulu called House of Pure Aloha or HOPA, as the locals called it. This store was a famous for its delicious shave ice and its (sometimes too) friendly owner Uncle Clay. Pictures of the place can be found here (http://manadeprived.com/2012/02/uncle-clay-and-the-boys-the-chronicle-of-canadian-beach-house-for-pro-tour-honolulu.html)
- Andrew’s list originally had 3 of each sword in the main deck and sideboard respectively but I felt that they were one too many and instead decided to put one Thrun main deck which freed up 2 slots in the sideboard for a 2nd [card]Celestial Purge[/card] and a singleton [card]Mortarpod[/card]
- When testing different Naya builds, the majority of the Beach House was onboard with a birthing pod brew after the first few initial days of testing but when day 1 approached, a large number of them jumped ship to GW humans or UW delver
- The direction I took my testing with Naya was to go GW Tokens (much like Martin Juza’s GP Hiroshima winning deck) splashing red for Huntmaster instead of Elspeth.
- The deck was performing reasonably well when the mana worked out, but it would get very awkward and often unwieldy hands. I often found that [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card] was difficult to cast and not having a turn 1 mana creature made the deck significantly less powerful
- By the end of the night before day 1, Andrew showed me his list and I just looked at the mana base and agreed that it seemed like the most correct. If you look at it, every land except for [card]Gavony Township[/card] can produce green and the cumbersome double colour issues (i.e. [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card]) were removed. I later found out that Alex Hayne was the mastermind behind the balancing of the colours.
- Ideally you want to compare this to a RG or Mono Green Aggro deck with white to shore up the problem matchups. In both cases you have a very difficult time dealing with [card]Mirran Crusader[/card] and both of the white cards in this list help deal with it very well. In terms of 3 drop creatures, [card]Daybreak Ranger[/card] we felt was very lackluster and underperforming. [card]Blade Splicer[/card] was a great improvement in that area. Also by adding in white, you can improve upon [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] with [card]Gavony Township[/card] as it has much better synergy with the sheer number of creatures you can spew out with this deck.
I was pretty happy with this deck. It served me extremely well as it was testing well against the house decks (Humans and Delver). Its nut draw was simply just curving out with a mana creature, a [card]Blade Splicer[/card], and a Huntmaster (or sometimes even Garruk) then activating a Gavony on turn 4 and flipping Huntmaster. This was reasonably easy to achieve as well with the amount of redundant cards to fulfill the same roles. I went 9-1 in standard with this deck, beating aggro decks left and right, and only dropping one match to ramp. That being said, if I could go back and do it again, the one thing I would fix is the ramp matchup as there was little to no testing done against it due to time constraints. [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]s in the main deck help a great deal when compared to Standard Mono Green or RG lists, but it still felt like it wasn’t enough. [card]Slagstorm[/card]s and [card]Whipflare[/card]s are reasonably problematic but I would definitely look towards a more resilient plan out of the board. The best thing I could do now with this list is bring in Thruns as they are big enough to withstand the sweepers. I’m not exactly sure what to change, maybe add [card]Vorapede[/card]? But it feels clunky and slow. I’m definitely open to suggestions.
My record at PT Honolulu was 9-1 in constructed and bombing out of limited with a 2-4 record. My single loss in standard was to Ramp but it was a strange build with white for [card]Day of Judgment[/card]s and some other questionably “interesting” card choices. The fact of the matter is that efficient sweepers like [card]Slagstorm[/card], [card]Whipflare[/card] and [card]Day of Judgment[/card] pose a reasonable problem for this deck, but that’s it. Pseudo sweepers like [card]Ratchet Bomb[/card] or [card]Black Sun’s Zenith[/card] are often too slow to get going or don’t do enough. The rest of the field I faced in Honolulu was comprised of some BR Zombies, UW/UWb Delver, WB/WUB Tokens, UW Humans, Tempered Steel, Mono Green, GR aggro and GW Aggro. It was pretty diversified but the main take away was that the majority of the field I played against was aggro. [card]Huntmaster of the Fells[/card] was an all-star in nearly every matchup I played him if my opponents didn’t have their own. If they did, then the white part of my deck was often the critical difference.
At GP Baltimore, Kyle Duncan took my list fresh from the PT and ran it to a stellar 9th place finish. The main deck he was using was identical to the list posted up there, but if I recall correctly his sideboard looked something like this:
[cardlist title=Sideboard]
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Celestial Purge
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Dismember
1 Daybreak Ranger
1 Corrosive Gale
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
[/cardlist]
I believe the last 4 cards were the innovative changes to the deck. [card]Corrosive Gale[/card] and [card]Daybreak Ranger[/card] are reasonable inclusions in order to make the delver spirits/tokens matchups better and [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] was a hedge against the popularity of decks like Frites (Reanimator) following its pro tour performance. Alex Hayne I believe was the person who noticed the deck’s inherent weakness to both [card]Inferno Titan[/card] and Elesh Norn and admittedly neither of those cards were majorly on our radar previously. Although they do often have [card]Ancient Grudge[/card] as an answer, having one out early usually buys you enough time to set up the aggro before they can stabilize. Also cutting some number of [card]Ancient Grudge[/card]s is almost certainly correct as we felt that we needed to have extra precautions against equipment Delver lists, which were popular prior to the PT, and in the event that Tempered Steel decided to make a surprise reappearance. Seeing as how both of those decks have fallen out of popularity, I would see less of a need for them these days, and might even consider cutting them all together.
The next change in the decklist came from my preparation for GP Lille. Although I didn’t do very well, the changes I made were as follows:
[deck title=GP Lille Naya Aggro]
[Land]
8 Forest
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Gavony Township
[/Land]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Strangleroot Geist
2 Porcelain Legionnaire
4 Blade Splicer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Hero of Bladehold
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Sword of War and Peace
3 Garruk Relentless
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Overrun
2 Green Sun’s Zenith
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Ray of Revelation
2 Celestial Purge
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Dismember
1 Corrosive Gale
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Purify the Grave
3 Manabarbs
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
As you can see, there was another major addition to the sideboard and a small change to the main deck.
Let’s start with the main deck. I decided to try out a random miser’s [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card] instead of the 4th [card]Oblivion Ring[/card]. The one card swap kept the card in that slot white but only changed the colour requirements by one white mana symbol, so I didn’t imagine it having too large of a strain on the manabase. At this stage I was looking to see if it would test good enough against sweepers to warrant adjusting the mana base in favour of white to include more of them.
The sideboard changes were only slight aside from the 3 [card]Manabarbs[/card] staring you in the face. I was guessing that UB control would be popular in the Lille metagame coming off of the Baltimore results. I don’t really need to tell you how good [card]Manabarbs[/card] can be against control decks. And once you find the right opportunity to stick it, it’s usually game over for them. But alas I didn’t get to test out my two changes since I was out of the tournament too quickly. Also worth noting is the change of 1 [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] to [card]Purify the Grave[/card]. The only reason behind this is because it gives you a bit more flexibility and helps you slightly dodge [card]Ancient Grudge[/card]s, as well as being slightly better against Delver and other Snapcaster decks. The main thing that I believe Francis Cormier pointed out to me was that a single [card]Mental Misstep[/card] solves [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] but you would need two to beat a well timed [card]Purify the Grave[/card]. Although this is not largely relevant, it could end up being the difference between a game winning flashback resolving or not.
Finally the last part of this analysis is with some much needed success in Brian Su’s CMT 1st place finish with the following deck list:
[deck title=Brian Su’s CMT #1 HOPA]
[Land]
8 Forest
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Gavony Township
[/Land]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Blade Splicer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Skinshifter
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Sword of War and Peace
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Oblivion Ring
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Combust
3 Celestial Purge
2 Mimic Vat
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Incinerate
1 Naturalize
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Wrack with Madness
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
For the deck explanation, I’m going to copy and paste an excerpt of a Facebook conversation I had with Brian about his adjustments below:
A lot of it came down to my testing showing that Oblivion Ring was the best possible card in this deck. I wanted some way to run extra virtual O-rings and with that logic I looked at possible sideboard choices.
I expected a lot of Zombies and I was rewarded. Purge saved space since it’s decent against black-blue as well, incidentally being amazing against Messenger and solid against [card]Curse of Death’s Hold[/card]. When I played sideboarded games against Zombies, the games felt absurd. Game 1 they will occasionally curve out by killing your mana dorks, play and/or copy Messengers and crush you. Game 2 and 3, you can aggressively trade all your creatures for theirs and their endgame is much worse than yours because of Purge. The Wrack was for [card]Phyrexian Obliterator[/card]. I had an extra slot for something random and went for the legendary storytelling.
The [card]Combust[/card]s were for [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card] and Delver. I’m sure you know that if you kill their early Delver, it’s very difficult to lose that matchup since every other card they have is a virtual blank. I expected a fair chunk of Delver since our meta is a little…behind the times occasionally. I think Delver is merely an OK choice for a tournament, but only if you’re an absolute master with it.
Meanwhile, testing against various flavours of humans showed their best card was [card]Hero of Bladehold[/card]. [card]Mirran Crusader[/card], multiple guys + Honor, [card]Angelic Destiny[/card], everything was raceable EXCEPT the Hero. Once again it comes down to having more and more O-rings for that matchup.
The rest looks really random but I wasn’t really sure how to sideboard in my other matchups. Because Purge and Combust saved me so much space, I could run whatever I wanted. I basically went in assuming I would need a mix of utility to beat the unknowns. The extra Thrun was obviously against some flavour of control, while shoring up Delver. [card]Naturalize[/card], [card]Ancient Grudge[/card], and [card]Incinerate[/card] were random, but helpful! I boarded them in against RG Hellrider, since it seems postboard, it’s all about Swords. I also boarded [card]Mimic Vat[/card] against RG and as a one-of extra spot against Zombies, for when the match becomes a Huntmaster trade war.
The Metamorphs, main and side, were a gamble but they were fantastic all day. Behind Feast and Famine, and O-ring, they were on par with Huntmaster. Quite often they were Huntmasters. I was toying with the idea of adding additional Green Zeniths to the main, just because of the Hunt, but I didn’t want to be locked into that plan too much. Turns out Metamorph is one of the best creatures in the format since the tournament had me copy Hunt, Strangleroot, a Bird of Paradise to chump flying Sworded Spirits, Messenger, etc.
Incidentally it was an additional removal spell against Elesh. I tested Frite briefly and it was horrible. That’s the reason behind the lone [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] as well. I basically prayed nobody had 4 Elesh Norns available. Also turns out that Frites has a hard time for Zombies so lucky me.
Based on Brian’s above reasoning, I feel that the deck list was well thought out and essentially perfect. Given the current state of the metagame however, I would most likely adjust the sideboard and possibly the main deck to reflect a more stabilized environment. Aggro decks are still large contenders, which are matchups this deck already shines against. Brian reemphasized the point that while Humans is a favourable matchup still, Hero’s have always been a problem. Frites seems to still be an issue, but if the tournament is large enough like a GP, I’d recommend against hoping it doesn’t show up and coming with a bit more preparation. [card]Phyrexian Metamorph[/card] is the new tech, or rather the tech ported over from RG. [card]Porcelain Legionnaire[/card]s and the singleton [card]Overrun[/card] may have been too cute but only time will tell. I wish Brian wrote more on the [card]Skinshifter[/card], but I can see it as being valuable in a variety of circumstances.
If I would give you a new decklist to play with given the above statement of the current metagame, I propose the following:
[deck title=A New HOPA]
[Land]
8 Forest
4 Razorverge Thicket
4 Copperline Gorge
3 Sunpetal Grove
2 Rootbound Crag
3 Gavony Township
[/Land]
[Creatures]
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Strangleroot Geist
4 Blade Splicer
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Sword of War and Peace
2 Garruk Relentless
2 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Oblivion Ring
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
3 Dismember
3 Celestial Purge
2 Mimic Vat/Manabarbs
2 Wrack with Madness
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Ray of Revelation
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Purify the Grave
1 Surgical Extraction
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
The reasons behind my changes here are slightly preferentially biased but also based on other feedback Brian gave. The maindeck [card]Skinshifter[/card] didn’t get any attention in Brian’s description so I could only assume it either never showed up or was not very relevant; although I secretly wished it to be awesome. Nevertheless, since Brian pointed that the Metamorph seemed to have served him well, moving the other one from the board to the main in place of the [card]Skinshifter[/card] seemed like a logical shift at not too great of an expense.
As this deck is slowly gaining popularity, especially in Canada now, the mirror match could be a real thing. In that case, Brian emphasized the re-inclusion of [card]Ray of Revelation[/card]. Replacing the former [card]Naturalize[/card] seemed simple to me. The shift from [card]Combust[/card] back to [card]Dismember[/card] is based on flexibility and preference. [card]Dismember[/card] can still kill all the same targets that [card]Combust[/card] can with the obvious drawback of costing life and being counterable. However, costing 1 mana may be largely relevant, as well as being able to hit [card]Phyrexian Obliterator[/card] which, in my opinion, is a big deal. The main issue to me is the relevance of being counterable or not. Costing one mana can make it slightly easier to kill their turn 1 play without much worry, but counterspells in general are being reduced in numbers in the current Delver lists, and as Brian pointed out, the deck itself is merely OK and should gradually be phasing out from the sounds of it. For these reasons, I feel that [card]Dismember[/card] might still be the best choice. But for those skeptics, you can still go back to [card]Combust[/card] or have some mix of both. Freeing up a slot from the shift of the Metamorph, bolstering the graveyard hate by 1 more card seemed easy to do, however [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] may have previously been good, [card]Surgical Extraction[/card] might just be better in order to get rid of all the available targets. For that reason, I was contemplating running 2 instead of [card]Purify the Grave[/card], but going back to [card]Mental Misstep[/card] reasoning above, I felt that splitting it up was a safe bet.
[card]Incinerate[/card] really didn’t convince me it needed a place in the sideboard and felt that increasing the number of [card]Wrack with Madness[/card] could be the way to go, especially in Canada, as Zombies is still kicking.
Finally, the [card]Mimic Vat[/card]s and [card]Manabarbs[/card] slots are really metagame dependent. Depending on where you are, if control is the name of the game, you probably want 2-3 [card]Manabarbs[/card] (in the case of 3, I suggest cutting 1 Wrack). If you are constantly running creatures into each other where you come from, then [card]Mimic Vat[/card] still seems like hot tech.
That’s it for now! Hopefully another article in the near future!
Cheers from Japan!
Daniel Pham
Canadian originally from Toronto who currently lives in Western Japan. Been playing Magic since Tempest block. Notable finishes include PT Nagoya top 100, GP Barcelona top 16, GP Shanghai top 8, GP Hiroshima top 32 in 2011. PT Honolulu top 32 in 2012.