A week of fluctuations was disappearing in my rear view mirror on Thursday night as I tried to decide what deck to build. While recording episode 47 of Horde of Notions we came up with a mono-green [card]Trading Post[/card] deck that ended up being pretty bad when I tested it earlier in the evening. Losing streaks suck, and they weren’t helping my general mood. That said, Thursday itself had been one good-news story after another and I was starting to feel like a human again.
That didn’t solve the burning question though: what to play?
Weapon Selection
When we recorded Horde of Notions this week, Travis and I came up with a GW lifegain deck that had tickled my brew-bone. Being able to gain 10 life from a [card]Thragtusk[/card] was pretty appealing, not to mention that [card]Rhox Faithmender[/card] is just an awesome blocker against Zombies. I was also very fond of the Team Canada Standard deck from the World Magic Cup (seen here) with a couple of tweaks to make it my own.
Most of you know that when it comes to FNM, I would rather play a decent rogue deck and do OK than win with a netdeck. This, along with the difficulty Delver decks have with Zombies and the prevalence of the undead in my meta had me leaning to the Rhox deck. Small problem: I only had one Faithmender. I asked around and nobody was sure that they could hook me up, so I built the Delver deck just in case. I really, REALLY wanted to play GW though, and fortunately Little Ninja Dawson was able to provide the goods. Here’s the list I ended up playing:
[deck title=GW Game of Life]
[Spells]
3 Rancor
3 Pristine Talisman
2 Chalice of Life
2 Sword of War and Peace
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim
1 Birds of Paradise
3 Vault Skirge
4 Blade Splicer
3 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Restoration Angel
4 Rhox Faithmender
4 Thragtusk
[/Creatures]
[Land]
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Gavony Township
3 Razorverge Thicket
4 Sunpetal Grove
6 Plains
6 Forest
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
2 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
2 Suture Priest
2 Celestial Purge
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
1 Oblivion Ring
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Tree of Redemption
2 Acidic Slime
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
I didn’t want to go the whole hog on the life gain plan, so I tried to give myself a viable aggro strategy to follow. Not many decks can handle turn one mana dork into turn 2 Sword, which this deck can do. It can also hit turn two Splicer turn three Angel, which in some cases might be more powerful. Above all the deck just destroys Zombies. [card]Rhox Faithmender[/card] is a must-kill for them, since it blocks all their dudes and only kills one of them. Also…
Being able to [card]Rancor[/card] up a Faithmender or [card]Vault Skirge[/card] seemed powerful, and of course Chalice promised to flip in a hurry with all the lifegain I have going on. I went with War and Peace in the main deck because of Bonfire and also due to the lifegain trigger. Being able to protect a creature from Conscripts also appealed to me.
[card]Suture Priest[/card] was in the deck against Elves and also in case anyone ran the Red Storm deck. [card]Tree of Redemption[/card] seemed good with Faithmender against a fast deck. I don’t remember now why I played Thalia; I think I only sided her in once.
What else did I consider?
Well, black. Sorin, [card]Vault of the Archangel[/card], [card]Vampire Nighthawk[/card] and even [card]Blood Artist[/card] were on my radar, thought Nighthawk didn’t last long. As much as I would have loved to try Sorin and Vault, I didn’t think the mana inconsistency was worth it.
I did think about adding [card]Ajani’s Sunstriker[/card], but WW on turn two when all my turn one plays wanted G seemed ambitious. I realize now that any of my turn one plays would have made it easier to get WW on two. Ah well, I think [card]Vault Skirge[/card] was the better choice anyway. [card]Healer of the Pride[/card] was a brief consideration, but my desire to stay away from cards that were sub par without things going right kept me away from it.
War Report
Having obtained my rhino clerics from Dawson and Crocker, I needed to play the deck. It seemed pretty straightforward but if there’s one thing I’ve learned through writing these articles, it’s that there are almost always some tricks in a deck that you can only discover by playing it. I grabbed one of the Little Ninja twins (Andrew or Evan, still can’t tell them apart) to get some games in. Problem was…he was playing Infect. That went about as well as you’d expect, especially since these were pre-board games. If I end up against this deck I really hope I can mull to Melira…
Our community Facebook group had been buzzing for a while about Travis, a player and store owner from Alberta, coming down for a visit with his binder. As Midgard is a fairly new store the singles collection is not extensive, so Travis was going to be able to bring some new cards into the community. He also brought a couple of players with him, which was awesome. Always nice to play against new blood.
Round 1 – Joseph Jacobson with BUGPod
Speaking of visiting players, here’s one first round! Joseph seemed like a really friendly guy and was playing a version of BG Pod, which of course I played for months. This instantly put him in my good books. My deck, however, was categorically NOT in said books. I kept a two-land hand that also had two [card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card], a [card]Thragtusk[/card] and a [card]Rhox Faithmender[/card]. I never saw a third land and despite drawing a third Pilgrim I had to start chumping his double-Sworded [card]Strangleroot Geist[/card]. Brilliant, one game in and I am already regretting my decision to play only 23 land.
Game Two was an epic back-and-forth battle that convinced me that my deck might actually be a real thing. I had an early Faithmender, followed by a [card]Thragtusk[/card]. [card]Restoration Angel[/card] blinked the [card]Thragtusk[/card], then I found a second Faithmender. Metamorph enabled me to copy Joseph’s [card]Sword of Feast and Famine[/card]. Joseph was bombarding the board with threat after threat but couldn’t find a way through. [card]Gavony Township[/card] was starting to put pressure on him, but he found the answer: [card]Havengul Lich[/card]. Having killed an [card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card], he stole it to be able to cast my white spells. From there it was a grind. At one point I was able to get him close by Metamorphing his [card]Massacre Wurm[/card] and draining him to single-digit life, but he cast a [card]Rhox Faithmender[/card] from my yard. On turn three of extra turns I ran out of ways to keep up. I was facing down three copies of [card]Massacre Wurm[/card]. He couldn’t kill me before the end of extras, but losing 1-0 and losing 2-0 were functionally the same to me so I scooped. Given how quickly game one ended, game two ended up taking about 50 minutes on its own. Wow.
No time to think, pairings are up!
Round 2 – Dawson Gallagher with BR Zombies
Pretty sure I’ve played Dawson more than any of the other Little Ninjas. Having lent him a [card]Falkenrath Aristocrat[/card] earlier in the evening (and with him having lent me the Faithmenders), we knew what to expect. Well I did. Dawson’s been playing some form of Zombie deck for a while and he is getting better with it, but a couple of times during the match he would show his overall inexperience. Game one he had three Blood Artists but no real threats except a single Aristocrat. He would start using his Artists to chump block [card]Thragtusk[/card]s despite being over 20 life, and when I found a Metamorph to copy his Aristocrat and a [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card] to protect it the game was over quickly.
Game Two he found two Aristocrats and a [card]Gravecrawler[/card] plus [card]Blood Artist[/card] and another Zombie. I couldn’t get started and lost in short order, although Dawson missed an on-board kill which I was happy to point out to him. I think we, as more experienced players, should be helping younger players improve, even if it means losing a game or two. Losing to a mistake from an inexperienced opponent might happen at Grand Prix but it doesn’t help anyone get any better. I thought my kindness was going to kick me squarely in the teeth when I had to mull to four in game three. Luckily my four was two lands, Pilgrim and Talisman. [card]Rhox Faithmender[/card] off the top meant I was likely to stay alive a while, and he was applying no pressure with just [card]Blood Artist[/card]s coming down. I had a Purge for his [card]Geralf’s Messenger[/card] and by the time the match ended, I was at 72 life having blinked a [card]Thragtusk[/card] a couple of times with [card]Restoration Angel[/card]. I do believe that was the first time I had ever won off a mull to four.
Between rounds I located Travis and started what would be an epic trade. He was in the market for judge foils and I was in the market to get rid of judge foils. Match made in heaven. I started off pulling stuff I needed to fill out my Standard card pool – extra Snapcasters, playset of Huntmasters (FINALLY) and a [card]Geist of Saint Traft[/card]. Before I could get started on Legacy staples, the next round was ready to start.
Round 3 – Chris Butt with All The Wurmcoils
I don’t think I have played Chris since I started writing this column, likely because he isn’t around much. Chris looks 13 but isn’t. Seriously, dude has a babyface to end all babyfaces. He kept a hand that seemed pretty slow, as he was stuck on five lands with nothing but a Metamorph (copying [card]Chalice of Life[/card]) in play. My Chalice could flip though, and his couldn’t. Eventually he hit six and dropped a [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card], but I had a sea of dudes on the board and an active [card]Gavony Township[/card]. When I blinked the creature he blocked with his Wurmcoil to prevent the lifegain, the writing was on the wall.
Game Two was pretty unfair. A first-turn Pilgrim enabled turn two Chalice, turn three Faithmender, turn four Chalice. As you can imagine I didn’t take long to flip them, and as he was playing UB he had no answer. Turns out 10 life a turn is a REAL short clock.
Back to the trade! Having rounded out my Standard collection I started picking out Legacy staples. [card]Bridge from Below[/card], [card]Lotus Petal[/card], [card]Hymn to Tourach[/card] and so on. Nope, still tons of credit left. More Modern it is then! By this time a couple of other people are lining up behind me, both to see the epic trade that’s going down and also waiting impatiently for their shot at the binder I was rapidly draining. But first, pairings are up again.
Round 4 – James Randall with Solar Flare
Hey look, JamRand is playing control again! The thing about control decks is that they need a lot of mana to function. We both mulled to six and I agonized over a hand with two land and two [card]Vault Skirge[/card]s, but kept. He snap-kept with me on the play. When JamRand got stuck on two land and I resolved a [card]Sword of War and Peace[/card] (after having a [card]Thragtusk[/card] and a Talisman countered) to go with my two [card]Vault Skirge[/card]s, JamRand scooped quickly. Many people would have continued the game there, hoping to get out of it. The decision was actually very astute. Solar Flare takes long enough to deal 20 damage, so dealing 50+ would likely take even longer. If he wanted to win or even draw the match, he needed to get to game two quickly.
I realized by turn two that I had made a bad keep decision. I had plenty of land and a Talisman, but no pressure to apply until turn four with [card]Thragtusk[/card]. That gave him 11 draws to find a [card]Mana Leak[/card] which of course he had. He untapped and dropped a [card]Consecrated Sphinx[/card], dealt with my copy of his Sphinx before his next draw step, then played a [card]Phantasmal Image[/card] to copy his Sphinx. Draw ALL THE CARDS. Game Three it is then.
Continuing the trend, game three was not a game. Turn one Pilgrim, turn two Sword. He had the [card]Doom Blade[/card], but I had a [card]Birds of Paradise[/card] to follow up. I untapped, equipped and beat in for eight. He couldn’t find the white mana he needed to flash back [card]Unburial Rites[/card] on Elesh Norn, so he lost in short order.
So far the deck has performed admirably. Sometimes it wins by just surviving too long for the opponent to cope, other times it gets a second-turn Sword and the opponent can’t recover. If I can win round five I should be in with a shot at top three, as there’s only one 4-0 at this point.
More trading! With a choice between a [card]Path to Exile[/card] or a pair of [card]Daze[/card] to round out my trade, I went with the Path. I only have three and getting half a set of [card]Daze[/card] for Legacy (which isn’t quite played here yet) seemed less valuable than finishing my set of Paths. In total I think 70+ cards changed hands, with a total value in excess of $1,000. Small change for the binder grinders I’m sure, but for someone like me it was the biggest trade I’ve done. I also managed to ship a lot of about-to-rotate stuff and some judge foils I was never going to use.
Round 5 – Blair Grouchy with Venser Stonehorn
Blair thinks I am a polar bear. He is also playing pretty much my Weeping Angels list, to which I have two main-deck answers and one more in the board. Blair’s awesome, always fun to shoot the breeze with and we generally have epic games. That wouldn’t be the case today, sadly.
Game One he hit the lock on turn six. I couldn’t find a Chalice before he found a second Stonehorn and was able to ultimate Venser, so I scooped. Game Two I got the Dork-Sword-Equip play, with a [card]Rancor[/card] to follow up. It was War and Peace and not Feast and Famine, that’s 10 damage on turn three. He didn’t draw an [card]Oblivion Ring[/card], so I won. Then we had game three, when he got the lock and I had three outs instead of two and still couldn’t find them before he got a Tamiyo AND a Venser emblem. Well, that was anticlimactic.
Make That Change
I think I may have found a deck that I want to play for a second week in a row. It’s been a while since I had one of those. I think three Faithmender is enough, and the Metamorphs don’t really do as much as some defense could do for me. Maybe a pair of [card]Oblivion Ring[/card] and [card]Beast Within[/card] would let me have a better game one against control decks. After boarding I can go for some more aggro out of the side, maybe even [card]Moltensteel Dragon[/card]. The board also needs more work against things like Pod. All in all I don’t think many changes are needed, and the deck is a ton of fun to play.
That’s all folks. With my plan to play the same deck again this week, hopefully I can see some improvement in my play decisions and get an extra win or two. Of course there’s still plenty of time for that plan to change, and the discussions I’ve been having on Twitter are tugging me gently towards a combo deck in Standard again. One involving white cards. Stay tuned!
Chris is a deck brewer, podcaster and lover of bacon. He’s recently realised he isn’t completely terrible at this game.