Standard

Redemption Song

Redemption [/rɪˈdɛm(p)ʃ(ə)n/]

noun

1. the action of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil: God’s plans for the redemption of his world
2.[in singular] a thing that saves someone from error or evil: his marginalization from the Hollywood jungle proved to be his redemption

From The Oxford Dictionary

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk5wNQpHRKo&w=600&h=300] (available only outside of US)

It had been a while since I last went 0-3 at any event, and even longer since I dropped from an event. With both of those things fresh in my mind, I needed to do well this week to keep myself out of a funk. Magic is my outlet and when that outlet isn’t going well, it affects me in other areas too. Silly? Perhaps, but when as much of your life is dedicated to this game as mine is it’s also understandable. What would I take to an FNM where doing well was my priority? Surely I’d be netdecking it up?

Weapon Selection

Well, that was the plan. Then a funny thing happened while recording Horde of Notions: we brewed something that sounded like it had potential. In case you haven’t been listening, every week on the show we take Gavin Verhey’s deck challenge in his article and approach it live on air. I don’t remember where, but I had heard about an infinite combo in Standard involving [card]Gilded Lotus[/card], [card]Deceiver Exarch[/card] and [card]Deadeye Navigator[/card]. As I’ve said many times in the past few weeks, I am a huge fan of combo decks. As we discussed the options on the cast I realized that not only could this be viable, but the deck around it was made up of good cards.

One of the biggest problems with combos in modern-day Magic is that they normally require subpar cards, or have so many parts to them that they just aren’t viable. Exarch and Navigator are already seeing play in [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks, and using [card]Bonfire of the Damned[/card] as the kill spell just repurposes a card we’d be playing anyway. The list we ended up with after the cast got refined, and after a discussion with Pro Tour champion Alex Hayne, here’s what I took to FNM:

[deck title=Going Infinite]
[Creatures]
1 Thragtusk
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Elvish Visionary
2 Viridian Emissary
3 Deceiver Exarch
1 Acidic Slime
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
2 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Zealous Conscripts
3 Deadeye Navigator
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Inferno Titan
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Bonfire of the Damned
2 Birthing Pod
3 Gilded Lotus
[/Spells]
[Land]
1 Desolate Lighthouse
3 Sulfur Falls
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Rootbound Crag
2 Mountain
6 Island
5 Forest
1 Kessig Wolf Run
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
2 Beast Within
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Autumn’s Veil
1 Wolfir Silverheart
2 Phyrexian Metamorph
2 Birthing Pod
1 Viridian Corrupter
1 Frost Titan
1 Phantasmal Image
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]

The sideboard plan is to take out the combo and go to a more traditional RUG Pod deck. I didn’t want to go all-in with a creature-based combo that seemed easy to disrupt, and I wasn’t confident enough in the rest of the deck being good to risk just losing. [card]Beast Within[/card] was to take out [card]Torpor Orb[/card], [card]Grafdigger’s Cage[/card] and any other problem permanents. There’s a lot of infect being played locally, and Melira is a nod to that.

In case it’s not obvious, we packed the deck with redundancy. Lotus, Navigator and either Exarch or Conscripts will give you an arbitrarily large amount of mana. Generally on the last iteration you tap Lotus for RRR and Bonfire their face. You also have the option of not re-pairing the Exarch on the final activation, then casting [card]Inferno Titan[/card] and blinking it to kill them. Other options include Huntmaster and [card]Thragtusk[/card] (lifegain AND infi dudes), [card]Kessig Wolf Run[/card] or just stealing all their permanents and blinking the creatures to keep them forever. Pairing with [card]Acidic Slime[/card] is also rather evil. You can play and constantly blink an [card]Elvish Visionary[/card] to find the wincon, or use Conscripts or Exarch to untap [card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card] to find it. If they manage to counter the kill spell, you can generate infinite mana again next turn.

How Did I Do?

I’m a pretty lucky guy. Most of you have probably noticed that this deck is NOT cheap, and when I showed up at the LGS I was short a [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card], two Bonfires and two Huntmasters. None of these were to be found in the store’s binder, but Flemming was able to lend me all but the Bonfires. Now where the heck was I going to borrow two $40 cards? Most people who have Bonfires are playing them these days. Fortunately Fudge was not playing his, and was willing to hook a brother up. Not many people would, so a big shoutout to him for that. One of the little ninjas was looking for cards, so I was happy to oblige there. After losing two Snapcasters and a [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] I am a little more reluctant to lend cards out, but these are good kids and I know I can trust them. Besides, I had just borrowed close to $150 worth of cardboard…how could I say no?

Round 1 – Mike Whelan with Wu Weenie

Mike has been playing some version of white weenie since Ajani came out. Game 1 I saw not one, not two, but THREE Ajani, and a very large [card]Doomed Traveler[/card] was almost the death of me as I could not find anything to take care of it and still keep Ajani in check. Every time I killed one, he would play another. Eventually with Mike on 16 and me a turn away from death I manage to top deck [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card], steal his giant Traveller and kill him with it and my army. Close.

Game 2 however was not close. Mike got some 1/1s out and I topdecked Bonfire…right into an [card]Outwit[/card]. Wait, what? [card]OUTWIT[/card]? Seriously? What is it with people playing super-secret tech cards against me? Well at least it wasn’t [card]Redirect[/card]. Unfortunately for Mike he drew like crap and when I played a Huntmaster then untapped and Bonfired his board away, he scooped. OK, 1-0 without playing a Pod or a Lotus. Easy game!

Looking around I can see Solar Flare, Mono-black Infect, Blitz Infect, Goblins, Naya and WG Aggro…and that was without getting out of my seat. It was going to be an interesting evening, that much was sure.

Round 2 – Paul Dunn with Naya Aggro

I haven’t played against Dunn since he came back to town. He was the guy I mentioned a couple of weeks ago who picked up the case of M13 and since then he has been trading like a fiend. I wasn’t sure what to expect from him but early [card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card] and [card]Blade Splicer[/card] told me everything I needed to know. Dunn went on the beatdown early and had me on the ropes, so I had to take a risk and go off with Huntmaster before I died to beatdown. A Bonfire would sweep my board for sure, but I would still be on 28 billion life and would have time to redraw my combo. Dunn made me slow down and go through the combo step by step, which made me think I was in trouble, but he let it happpen, drew his card, shrugged and scooped. He told me after the fact that he had drawn a [card]Planar Cleansing[/card] but didn’t have a third white source. That would have been unpleasant.

Game 2 seemed to be going exactly as I wanted it to go. I had Exarch and a [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] copying [card]Restoration Angel[/card] on the board along with a Lotus, with Bonfire, Pod, another Exarch and Conscripts in hand. My plan was to drop Pod, play Conscripts, Pod it into Navigator and win. Dunn ripped his own Bonfire and swept my board, leaving me in a very bad position. I knocked the top of my deck, hoping for a Navigator, and instead drew a land. I had five land and [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] in play at this point.

A few weeks ago, I would have missed the play. I have a tendency to make the first play that I see, especially if it’s cute, even if it’s not the best or even a good play. I’ve since learned to analyze the board at least somewhat, and was able to see the play: Pod paying two life, play the land, Exarch off the Lotus, untapping Lotus. Conscripts untapping Lotus again. Tap Lotus for UUU, pay two life and Pod Conscripts into Navigator, pair and go off. Man was that satisfying!

Round 3 – Blair Grouchy with Solar Flare BLAIR

Flare has been in and out (mostly out) of the meta since Innistrad came out, and has seen some SCG Open success. Blair is a stone-cold master with the deck though, likely because of his beard. He’s also just a good player in general, and always fun to play against. Decks with counters are never easy to beat with combo decks, but I knew that many versions of Solar Blair didn’t run counters in the main deck. Turns out this version didn’t either, and in game 1 I was able to get superior beats on the board to take it down.

Game 2 would be very different, and I was pretty sure I would be facing down [card]Negate[/card]s and [card]Dissipate[/card]s. I brought in the extra Image, [card]Frost Titan[/card] and the two Pods from the board, dropping Slime, an Emissary, a Bonfire and a Visionary. I reasoned that Bonfire was of limited use when virtually the only creature I’d be fighting was a [card]Sun Titan[/card]. Pods would be my best bet at fighting counters, and if I needed to win by being a traditional Pod deck then I was fine with that. As it turned out, he got the [card]Sun Titan[/card]s early and I couldn’t get rid of them all fast enough to matter. Onward to game 3, sadly with only eight minutes to go. We played as fast as we could, to the point that on turn three I had enough mana to cast a lethal miracled Bonfire. I didn’t draw it, but on Blair’s turn he took out my two [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] and left the game as a certain draw.

Round 4 – Shane Crewe-Wyatt with Mono-black Zombies

No time to think about how I could have won the last round, though I am not sure I could have. Ol’ Shug is a good friend of mine and generally plays Red. When Dark Ascension came out though he was on Zombies for a while, but recently he’d gone back to tapping Mountains. I was expecting Goblins when he sat down, and like Blair with Flare Shug is a master at burning people out. When he dropped a Swamp on turn one I had no idea what to expect.

Game 1 I got run over by [card]Highborn Ghoul[/card]s. By the time I found a Bonfire he had [card]Blood Artist[/card]s in play and I was out of time. Game 2 wasn’t much better as Geralf had some messages to send, and although I really wanted to write “Return to Sender” on them I didn’t have the means. Even though Shug missed an on-board kill with [card]Mortarpod[/card], I just had no answer to the [card]Tragic Slip[/card]s, unblockable Highborns and constant grinding damage.

Well…that sucked. Shug actually felt bad for so thoroughly destroying me, but I wasn’t upset about that. I was upset that I was likely well out of the running now. Completely illogical of course but drawing and then losing to a deck that came completely out of left field, without being able to put up any semblance of a fight, was tilting me hard. The match was over fast, which fortunately gave me plenty of time to stew in my juices and get into a better state to play the last round.

Round 5 – David Bishop with TurboFog

Prior to M13 I would have been heavily favoured against TurboFog, as I could just hold the combo in hand until I was ready to go off, then Bonfire him out. Now that [card]Safe Passage[/card] is a card, that mode of attack is not as open as it could be. I was very worried about being able to win this matchup, for the second week in a row.

I had forgotten something, though: [card]Acidic Slime[/card]. A last-minute inclusion to the deck, Alex Hayne had suggested removing it. I wanted it in though, so I kept it. It was a wrecking ball for me, taking Dave off his white mana. When I paired [card]Inferno Titan[/card] with Navigator he had [card]Snapcaster Mage[/card]-[card]Safe Passage[/card] to save him, but as I could just repeat it next turn after taking out his white sources he just scooped. It was only later on that I realized how little I should have cared about [card]Safe Passage[/card], as I could just start the blink chain again in response to the Passage. Well at least it didn’t cost me the match!

Having seen how effective [card]Acidic Slime[/card] was, I sided in the second one, and again it did work for me, taking him down to four lands on the crucial turns with no white available. Dave had to [card]Beast Within[/card] a [card]Thragtusk[/card] to keep me from going off with it, giving me ALL THE VALUE of two Beast tokens, but I had the Bonfire to kill him next turn when he was tapped out.

So a 3-1-1 finish with my only loss being, now that I think about it, unpreventable. That should get me back on track!

What Did I Learn?

“Pro Tour Champion” and “always right” are not synonymous. A lot of the suggestions I got from Alex were helpful, but I had a feeling that the deck needed a catch-all answer and I was right. That doesn’t mean you don’t listen when people give you advice though!

Thinking about what’s on the board and how each piece interacts is crucial. I did this against Dunn and it won me the game, but against Dave it could have lost me the game if he had drawn a sweeper after flashing back the [card]Safe Passage[/card].

Sometimes, you just lose. Not because you played badly, or because of variance, or because the deck is bad. Sometimes it’s just the wrong matchup and you have no tools to make it better.

This deck is a real threat. It’s a blast to play for one thing, but it’s also actually good. When we brewed the deck we knew that the cards surrounding the combo had to be good in order to make the deck work, and I also tried to keep Kibler’s mantra in mind for [card]Birthing Pod[/card] decks: make sure the deck doesn’t just collapse without Pod.

Sometimes your opponent’s game plan can help you in the short term. Against Dave for example, his [card]Rites of Flourishing[/card] were drawing me into my combo faster and helping me ramp. I could have taken them out with [card]Acidic Slime[/card], but it seemed like the wrong play. I’d never put them in the deck but they were really good to have in play!

I won’t be sorry to see [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] rotate.

What’s On Deck?

With Game Day this weekend, I need at least two decks. I might play this again at one of the Game Day events but at the other and at FNM I have some ideas in mind. [card]Mirran Crusader[/card] seems really strong right now so something with him in it is near the top. I also want to try something with [card]Trading Post[/card], something with Elesh Norn and something with [card]Entreat the Angels[/card]. Finally, Zombie Pod is calling my name. Has anyone tried [card]Phylactery Lich[/card]?

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments