October 31st – Looking at Limited
Much time has been spent on Constructed over the last few weeks going over numerous decks and numerous combinations. I did some limited the week after Pro Tour BFZ and liked how “narrow” the format is. But my inner-voice (ie Jhun) kept haunting my facebook with messages such as below:
Already the team can hardly meet altogether and most of the time was dedicated to constructed play. After all I couldn’t test on my own. But thankfully, Wei Han did some drafts and I did quite a number myself to get a feel of the format which I felt very okay about.
Team Sealed is simply your average sealed deck on steroids. Normally one would get six boosters to construct a deck, but with Team Sealed, its twelve boosters for three decks. While booster to player ratio may be 1/3 less, but especially for BFZ block, it enhances all three main archetypes in the format with plenty of card selection. BFZ limited is divided into a few main archetypes:
1. Devoid (Either U/R, U/B or R/B and sometimes all three colours)
2. White / X Allies (splashing either red or black, sometimes both)
3. Green / X (normally referred to Eldrazi where green ramps / spawns into larger colorless monsters). Green/X also allowed splashing in off colour bombs through its array of mana/land fixing.
What I found after several boxes of sealed, that the archetypes rarely deviated from the core three. Sometimes you do get the broken awaken control deck (I had a blue white awaken with two copies of Felidar Sovereign) but usually once we get set into the core archetypes, it was more of just filling up the final three to six cards in the respective decks. I wasn’t overconfident, but its something we will get together and look into once we have our base constructed decks, which I hope will be soon.
November 12th 2015 – 30 days to go
Four weeks to go to be exact. The team made some headway into the directions of the decks we want to be in but to be honest we haven’t done as much testing together as I hoped. When I look at team composition for the WMC, I felt Malaysia has a slightly upper hand, demographically and perhaps team dynamics as well. I caught an article from Hwang Hao Shan who was on a 4-week road trip leading up to Barcelona and he commented in his blog that he had “met up” with the rest of his teammates and would only be meeting them a week before the event. No doubt plenty of online testing and discussions would happen, but for a team that has never worked together before, things can get pretty rough especially if you have a high caliber player like Hwang on your team. When I mean rough, meaning the team will likely just follow Hwang’s directions and do isolation testing themselves, probably unlikely but not impossible to develop team synergies.
Also I believe because of the demographics, most teams will set testing objectives for each member, piloting their respective selected decks and mastering them independently. While this strategy is not incorrect and certainly Malaysia’s strategy for the final 2 weeks leading up to the tournament, but I felt the team’s most experienced player need to test every single deck himself. This not only allows the player to understand the various lines that goes in each deck, but it allows him/her to make game time decisions based on experience with the various decks, rather than just examining the board state and his/her teammates hands. There’s a big difference in “what I think you should do” and “what I would do” in tight situations. Having play experience across all decks helps you greatly to make that decision.
Malaysia Team Constructed
In the last two weeks, I ploughed through many different combinations of decks. Through online research, watching hundreds of games, videos and articles and also getting input from Malaysia’s finest, Raymond and myself narrowed down to a key direction. The deck selection was never based on the pilot’s individual abilities, but the best combination of cards to build at least two power decks backed by an aggressive third deck to steal some wins.
Our early combinations was:
Mardu Dragons + GW Megamorph + Jeskai Burn
Mardu Dragons + GW Megamorph + GR Ramp
While GW Megamorph was solid (and the addition of Disdainful Stroke shored the Eldrazi matchup), but the combination felt loose. We were watering down the decks with the first combination and was not really utilizing the maximum potential of the cards available in the format. It was then I realized, we needed to max out the power less across all our decks and that somewhat meant we needed to do / play the following:
1. As many fetches as possible
2. Hangarback Walker
3. Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy
4. Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
5. Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
6. Wingmate Roc
7. Siege Rhino
8. Dromoka’s Command
9. Den Protector
There were some notable mentions that were on the fringes of being in the priority list, namely:
1. Mantis Rider
2. Crackling Doom
3. Ojutai’s Command 4. Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
5. Sweepers (Crux of Fate, Languish, Planar Outburst)
It was back to the drawing board….
November 15th 2015 - Disaster
PPTQ Sunday at HQ.
6 DeCards members.
Zero top eights.
Syed won with a Jeskai “Grey” Dragons brew.
GP Brussels dominated by Esper Dragons and 4C Rally.
Disappointing. A combination of bad habits such as lack luster testing, last minute wholesale changes and just a tad bit of overconfidence plus pressure all snowballed to early exit in the small 32-man tournament. Advice from all around telling me to put Constructed aside as the metagame kept morphing from week-to-week. But I was never a believer in last minute preparation. Less than a month to go to WMC and we still haven’t found a real combination that I was in love with. I didn’t want to repeat the PPTQ showing and just played a combination of ideas of what “I think” would work. GP Brussels was happening this weekend and GP Kobe was the week after so I was hoping to lock something down within this week.
November 16th 2015 – A light in the tunnel
Esper Dragons everywhere….
Dragonlord Ojutai and I have a small history together. Back in April, I was really high on Esper Dragons to the point it was almost my selection for the RPTQ Vancouver @ Sparta. But a last minute pivot (and thankfully a good one) to Den-Raptors pushed the Ojutai brigade aside. But I didn’t quite let the idea go, as I tried it once again during a Sparta open that ended with a disaster and once again Dragonlord Ojutai was banished to slumber.
Fast forward months later, Dragonlord Ojutai was called back into service to reign over the Abzan madness and reigned it did. Lukas Blohon recorded 15 (fifteen!) match wins, byes included, of a possible 18 to take the title. There were numerous articles from SCG and CFB on the deck but it’s the little things that made big differences from the few versions I had previously for WMC. His list here:
http://mtgtop8.com/event?e=10923&d=262215&f=ST
3 Jace Vryn’s Prodigy + 1 Ojutai Command
The Command was effectively the 4th Jace with an added utility of being the 7th/8th counterspell and 4th gain life card in the deck. My earlier versions tried a combination of 4 Jace + 4 Command but quickly realized it was too much and started cutting either. Blohon got it right.
Right mix of removal
Most Esper lists try to overload on removal to try to manage some of its toughest matchups such as Atarka red. But Lukas blend was a thing of beauty. I would do one small change, is to add a second Crux of Fate.
Manabase
Seems quite academic, 8-10 fetchlands, 8-10 basic lands, 2 havens, 3-5 battle lands and 0-2 Shambling Vents. But those who played Esper prior to this had this unique problem of balancing turn 2 Silumgar’s Scorn + Bile Blight. Now that Bile Blight was gone, the mana felt smoother and he didn’t go overboard with Shambling Vent with just a singleton copy. Sometimes less is more.
So I decided to introduce the Esper Dragons back into our mix (straight up Lukas’s deck) and it did well. Much better than I thought it would. Immediately the idea of pairing Esper and Abzan intrigued both Wei Han and myself. It was two strong Tier 1 decks with tools to beat 2/3 of the metagame and we were loving it! The small problem:
Both decks needed 4 copies of each. While Abzan had alternatives ie Sandsteppe Citadel / Caves of Koilos / Llanowar Wastes, but Esper did not. So we went into the tank to adjust the manabase for Abzan. The deck lost a lot of speed. It lost to strength to play Anafenza the Foremost consistently on turn 3 if you were following up with the Warden of the First Tree on turn 1. But Wei Han was determined we could make it work. I believe him.
And today’s testing also confirmed one final tested theory. Mardu was dead.
November 17th 2015 – Syed + Green cards
Coming into today’s testing I already had the 3 decks on the back of my mind. But I needed to put one final deck to the test. Jeskai Black.
We brought two versions of Jeskai Black – Pantheons PT Top 8 version (swapping main deck Dispels for Negates) and Todd Andersons controllish version. Both looked great on paper with decent results.
Its gauntlet? Esper Dragons, Abzan and Ramp.
Pre-board results:
4-3 in favour of Abzan losing the matches to mana issues in one and getting hit by triple Mantis Riders in other two.
3-1 in favour of Esper losing because Esper didn’t draw any Duresses whereas a single Duress ripped the Jeskai securing the three other victories.
3-2 in favour of Ramp losing because Ramp drew 17 lands and 5 spells in one game and just got tempo’d (Soulfire into Mantis into Negate) in another.
These were promising results. Meaning Jeskai Black couldn’t beat these three decks in a fair fight. Jeskai needed the right number of weapons or few things to go wrong in opponents decks for it to win.
So at the end of testing, there was only one matter left at hand. Getting Syed to play Ramp. For people who are familiar with Syed, green is NOT his favorite colour. In fact, Syed even laughs at his own joke about playing a turn 1 Overgrown Tomb in Modern. Will see what happens in the coming weeks ahead….
End of Part 2
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