In perhaps the most entertaining video to date, the two core members of Mana Deprived (Doug P & myself) take on the legendary Michael J Flores. Flores wanted someone to play Brad Nelson’s GP-winning deck against his Eldrazi creation. Obviously, we insta-volunteered. Here is the first game of our testing…
Link: UW vs. Eldrazi UW
In Retrospect
At the beginning of the video, I said a few things about Mike’s deck that could be taken the wrong way. I said it was SLOW. This was mainly influenced by the fact that we had to wait for Mike to beat a Mono White deck before we could play against him. For what appears to be a Tier 2 deck at best, it gave Mike one heck of a long fight. Another thing I said had to do with the inclusion of All is Dust with Planeswalkers and Spreading Seas already in the deck. I believe this particular feature makes Mike’s creation hard to play. There’s a lot of resource management going on.
The only alternative line we could have taken in this game is at the 4:00 mark. Instead of playing the Tectonic Edge, we could have played Arid Mesa. This puts us at a better position to have more white mana sources in the following turns. I feel like the only card we really want to Edge is the Eye of Ugin. Mike is going to have so much mana anyways, so hating on Temples might bring minimal edge. My objective would be to use board wipes on Kozilek as much as possible, while saving our Paths for Ulamog. I have not consulted Doug about these thoughts, so maybe he will have a different take on things.
If you enjoyed this video, please click on the “Tweet This!” button at the bottom of this post. Doug P & I do not make any money out of this. All we want is feedback… For now…
Until next time,
KYT
Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.
I was in the room watching that game (burn3000) and had a feeling someone was recording this since it was an epic game. Me and my friend netvagabond had a side convo going and we kept saying "that's game.." everytime flores played something big..then "WTF" when you'd answer it. VERY entertaining game to watch..thank you for the commentary!
Skype picked up all my breathing hahahahaha. That is too funny 😛
Sweet Jason haha I actually decide to give you a Shoutout in the next section hahaha. I give a shout out to both of the watchers. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for checking us out. Where did you hear about us?
I follow mtg on twitter and saw a few of doug's matches last week..good stuff! Keep em' coming =)
You're probably right about playing out the white source – this way, you could martial coup away his kozilek instead of pathing it, giving you 5 tokens.
I think you wanted to force him to all is dust as soon as possible – this frees both your colonnades. The inherent conflict between all is dust and spreading seas seems good to try to take advantage of.
The winning end-game for you is when you start beating down with colonnades.
You might've gotten there, you might not've. No clue since I dont know what flores had.
I was the other watcher, net_vagabond. I really loved this match, it was a lot of fun to watch, and watching it again with commentary is cool too. I'm always happy to see a match between people that are good at this game as I hope to be in the future. Thanks allowing watchers and posting vids with commentary, it's great for the magic community.
I completely agree with you that colonades need to provide the beatdown and fast at that. The longer the game goes on. the longer the deck will recycle itself with the graveyard shuffling effects. There's only so long to stay alive until the eye comes out. might be worth saving edges and seas just for those late game. Great matches though! Game 3 was nuts, can't wait to see the vid.
Yeah this was a tough game because I had not experienced the matchup at all yet. After the games, I felt like that would have been a much sounder line and completely agree with you. I can't pretend like we made the right plays, in re-watching I thought of a few different plays that could have been much better. Thanks for the feedback though guys! It helps a great deal when we are considering moving forward with these fun but time consuming ventures. I have been having such a blast doing it though!
Game 2? Yeah that game was a lot of fun it is up now. We didn't have a chance to play more yet since Flores had to go to sleep, but you can look for more testing in the future!
WOW, I actually thought you guys had that one. It almost felt like you lost to a combo deck, since basically Ulamog + All Is Dust & swing left you with what, 3 permanents? I'm going to have to watch game 2 first, but I'm liking this Eldrazi UW so far…
Can we have the list of flores? Very nice video, I go watch G2 right now!
Yeah check out http://www.fivewithflores.com it is a great blog I fully support, he gives all his ideas on there and shares some pretty sweet decklists!