ModernStandard

The Last Worlds (Part 1)

(Team Canada from left to right: Noah Long, Marc Anderson, Dan Lanthier

This is my first article for Mana Deprived.  You can be forgiven if you do not know who I am.  My name is Marc Anderson and I was fortunate enough to have some good finishes in 2011, leading to me locking up level 4 for the last year of Pro Club existence.  This year has been a complete whirlwind for me, going from casual cube player to getting my first PTQ top 8, coming second in Ontario Provincials, winning Canadian Nationals and coming 12th at Worlds in San Francisco.  This first (and second) article for Mana Deprived will be recounting the Canadian perspective of Worlds, from deck choices to play situations.

I decided to fly over to San Francisco a few days early to adjust for jet lag and see a bit of the city before locking myself indoors for almost a week.  I couldn’t go to GP San Diego due to work, but knowing that I was in store for a minimum of 22 rounds of magic the following weekend meant that I was pretty sure I would not really be looking back wishing I had played more.

I left Toronto and arrived at the airport Tuesday morning to meet up with David Caplan (Cappy) and Dan Lanthier (one of my teammates) who had just flown in from the Grand Prix.  We hopped in a cab together and drove through what I believe to be the most beautiful city in the US.  I may only have seen a few dozen of them, but San Francisco’s combination of misty mountains, sprawling cityscape and boat-filled waters made me thankful to have come a bit early.

After waiting for Noah Long and Alex Hayne to arrive, we tried to book a trip to Alcatraz but found out that the tours were booked full for the day already, so we bought tickets for Wednesday morning.  We went out in search of food, explored the area a bit and returned to the hotel to test.  I knew from corresponding online that the room was mostly set on mono red for Standard, which was what I was thinking anyways, though the build they had was much better in the current meta.  I was already familiar with the deck from Provincials and we did not end up testing too much Standard since Modern was much more pressing.

The Standard build I was going for was more traditional, with 4 Koths main and [card]Manabarbs[/card] in the board, but Hayne’s list had a number of things going for it.  First off, it was much better against the Illusions deck that had been growing in popularity for the last few weeks.  Second of all, it made a lot of the cards in the deck better by having more of a plan.  The number of cheap one drops all made [card]Shrine of Burning Rage[/card] and Berzerkers better, while the reduced land count and mana curve meant you had a lot more keepable hands, as anything that had 1 to 4 lands could be ok depending on the matchup. For reference here was the original team list, as available on the worlds coverage of Cappy’s deck tech.

[Deck title=Canadian Mono Red]
[Creatures]
4 Chandras Phoenix
4 Goblin Fireslinger
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Spikeshot Elder
4 Stormblood Berserker
4 Stromkirk Noble
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Arc Trail
3 Galvanic Blast
4 Gut Shot
2 Incinerate
4 Volt Charge
[/Spells]
[Artifacts]
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
[/Artifacts]
[Land]
21 Mountain
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
2 Arc Trail
4 Dismember
2 Koth of the Hammer
1 Manic Vandal
2 Traitorous Blood
4 Vulshok Refugee
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

The original list had 3 [card]Traitorous Blood[/card], which I argued should be 2 blood and a [card]Manic Vandal[/card], since there are actually a lot of matchups where you just want 1 Vandal (Wolf-Run, the mirror, plus it comes in vs Steel and Tezz) and the whole room agreed.  I made two other changes to the deck, swapping the third [card]Galvanic Blast[/card] and the third [card]Grim Lavamancer[/card] for the second [card]Spikeshot Elder[/card] and a [card]Brimstone Volley[/card].  Lavamancers and Elders are both pretty miserable in multiples, so I figured 2/2 was better than 3/1, and the Volley is better vs GW and Wolf-Run where at some point in the game you just need to burn them out before they overwhelm you.  After seeing more Steel and Mono Red than expected, I switched the Volley back to the third [card]Galvanic Blast[/card] for the team portion and added a second [card]Manic Vandal[/card] for the 4th [card]Dismember[/card], but I left the 2/2 Grim/Spikeshot split.

Modern was a lot trickier.  Before I got there, many lists were being thrown around on our Canadian Nationals thread, particularly from Noah, and the most recent idea for the past few days had been an Ad Nauseam list.  The one we started working on looked something like this:

[Deck Title=Canadian Ad Nauseam]
[Creatures]
4 Simian Spirit Guide
1 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Ad Nauseam
4 Repeal
1 Lightning Storm
4 Sleight of Hand
1 Slaughter Pact
2 Pact of Negation
4 Condescend
3 Telling Time4 Angels Grace
[/Spells]
[Artifacts]
3 Engineered Explosives
[/Artifacts]
[Land]
3 Watery Grave

1 Tolaria West
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Dreadship Reef
4 Misty Rainforest 
4 Calciform Pools
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
3 Snow-Covered Island
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
2 Mystical Teachings
4 Leyline of Sanctity
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Firespout
2 Pact of Negation
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]

We threw it together and tried it against Zoo, Twin and Affinity as a trial by fire, which it failed pretty convincingly.  Admittedly our list was not the best, and others had more tuned versions, but even if we had come to the perfect Ad Nauseam list, I still would not have been happy with it in my hands on Saturday.  Looking for inspiration, Noah started perusing the lists from the previous Pro Tour, trying to see what decks would still be viable after the bannings, but nearly every deck required either [card]Green Sun’s Zenith[/card], [card]Ponder[/card]/[card]Preordain[/card], [card]Cloudpost[/card] or [card]Rite of Flame[/card].  The only deck left was Antonino De Rosa’s rock deck.  So, being near Alcatraz and all… we built rock!  It was doing pretty well too, beating Zoo and Affinity pretty consistently, and having a decent enough Twin match after board.  As we headed for bed, Noah began coughing like a madman, looking more and more like a good target for ghoulraiser…

Sure enough, upon waking up the next morning, Noah looked, sounded, and probably even smelled like death himself.  He backed out of Alcatraz and I was getting more and more worried that he wasn’t going to be ready for three or four days of intense mental exertion.  That night we mostly finished finding the cards for all of our Standard decks and stuck Noah with rock for the teams portion, using him as a lab rat to see if the deck was as good as we hoped.  The list he ended up using was pretty decent to be honest, but just not powerful enough sometimes.  Noah played:

[deck title=Canadian Modern Rock]
[Creatures]
4 Sakura Tribe Elder
4 Tarmagoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Eternal Witness
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Smother
1 Doom Blade
2 Damnation
3 Death Cloud[/Spells]
[Planeswalkers]
2 Liliana of the Veil
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
[/Planeswalkers]
[Land]
4 Forest
4 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Twilight Mire
2 Treetop Village
2 Marsh Flats
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Overgrown Tomb
2 Golgari Rot Farm
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
[/Land]
[Sideboard]
4 Dark Confidant
3 Torpor Orb
3 Natures Claim
2 Duress
1 Damnation
2 Primal Command
[/Sideboard]
[/Deck]
Noah slept all day, and was surprisingly looking much better by the time we were ready for bed.  I met up with my family and girlfriend who had just flown in, and tried to get enough sleep to play my best.

The Rock (Alcatraz) - so what do you think we played in Modern?

Thursday morning, Noah was looking much better. I found the last couple of cards I needed in the midst of completing the last ever Worlds opening ceremony and we were off to round 1.

It was a pretty unreal experience, being my first Pro Tour, as not only was I constantly surrounded by famous pros, I got to play against a scaling level of famous people in their own right, from Kitt Holland to Shahar Shenhar to Pat Cox to Owen Turtenwald!  The deck performed as expected, without too many interesting games (but a few sweet topdecks!), and I ended the day 4-2, beating an Illusions deck, two GW decks and Tempered Steel, losing to Shahar and Pat, who were both also playing GW!  The total record for the deck, between three of us (Noah, Cappy and myself) playing swiss, 4 rounds of MOCS, 4 rounds of teams and the two top 8 rounds was 21-7 against the World’s best, so props to Hayne for the sweet list.

In the teams portion of day 1, our plan was to have Dan win all of his legacy matches (since not only is he a strong legacy player, but a lot of the countries represented did not have as much of a legacy community as Canada does) and then have Noah and I alternate wins to get the job done.  Dan did his part, using UW Stoneforge to beat the mirror and a Doomsday deck, and luckily for Noah, I used our mono red list to beat two versions of Wolf-Run, because our rock deck didn’t win a single game (vs Jund and Ad Nauseam of all things, but their list had some spice such as [card]Phyrexian Unlife[/card]).

We ended the day with every Canadian having a positive record (Me, Noah, Rich, Hayne, Marcel 4-2, Dan 3-2-1, Cappy 6-0).  Cappy also went 3-1 in the MOCS, tied for first and Canada was first overall in the teams!  Everyone was feeling pretty good and I was stoked for the next two days of draft and modern.  With that, day 1 was complete, and I’ll wrap up today’s installment.  I’ll see you guys next week for draft, modern, and some more stories of what was overall an excellent stop in foggy San Francisco.

Thanks,
Marc Anderson

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