Max Tietze
7/30/2012 11:22:00 AM
Hi, my name is Max Tietze, and my goal in Magic is to one day Top 8 a tournament and have the judge pronounce my name correctly (TEETS). I have been playing Magic since Urza's Destiny, but am new to writing about it. I have spent the last few years firmly in the semi-pro category, (does it count as being on the train if you win a PTQ every season?) but am working to better my game and hopefully make it to the big leagues someday. This is the story of my Modern experience at GP Columbus. I left out most of the fun details, like how we made our own Mexican Pizza Saturday night. Feel free to email me for the recipe though. (Hint: Yo quiero Dominos.)
The week leading up to the Grand Prix consisted of nightly testing on Magic Workstation with my friend Pete Ingram. I have never been one to do much testing for events, aside from grinding tournaments on Modo. However, testing sessions are really the best way to learn about a format. Playing in tournaments will give you experience against a variety of decks, but it will take much longer to get a feel for your matchups. You are generally only playing one match per hour and there are no take backs or opportunities to discuss lines of play with your opponent.
Our plan was basically to start with the decks we initially wanted to play (UW Midrange for myself and Jund for Pete) and run them against a gauntlet of established decks. I had cashed in a few Daily Events with UW and I liked the feel of the deck so I was hoping it would stand up to testing. Unfortunately, after playing a bunch of games against Jund and stock Naya Pod, I quickly lost all faith in the deck. It didn't seem to be able to handle the barrage of threats coming out of these decks. UW's plan was to deal with the opponent's important cards using
Path to Exile and counters plus Snapcaster, and gum up the ground with
Kitchen Finks, while winning with fliers. Maybe the list I had just wasn't well tuned, but I kept finding myself facing down infinite attackers after dealing with a
Restoration Angel or two, or just being overwhelmed by Liliana, Bloodbraid and friends.
The next phase of testing involved both Pete and I joining the Naya bandwagon and considering that maybe it was strong enough to overcome its status as the deck to beat going into the tournament. It certainly was crushing Jund and had been good against UW, but once we got to BW tokens and Storm it seemed like Naya was having trouble winning a game let alone a match. We were playing Storm with a transformational board into
Splinter Twin, and Naya seemed to have difficulty with either half of the deck, which made it clear that UR in general would be hard.
Pete wound up playing Naya at Columbus, but after the testing we had done I just didn't feel like it had enough of an edge on the field to warrant fighting through mirrors and bad matchups. One thing that we were happy with was the addition of blue for
Phantasmal Image and
Deceiver Exarch. Pete convinced me to try it, and it really lets you combo them out of nowhere with a
Birthing Pod. For example, you can start with a Pod, a
Birds of Paradise and a
Wall of Roots and go Wall into Exarch, untap Pod, Birds into Image copying Exarch, untap Pod, Image into
Restoration Angel, blinking Exarch to untap Pod, and finally Angel into Kiki-Jiki, making infinite
Deceiver Exarchs for the win. Note that if you have 8 life to pay, you only need two lands out to complete that whole sequence. Also, aside from
Phantasmal Image being an all around useful card, it is great to have as an option to
Chord of Calling for and kill your opponent's Kiki-Jiki in the mirror.
My decision to play UWR came about a day before it was time to leave for the tournament. Our testing process had been very frustrating with no one deck clearly dominating all the others. Storm seemed like it was the best against everything, and with a lack of graveyard hate being played it appeared to be well positioned. However, storm is just not a strategy that I'm experienced with and I knew that if I played it I would be kicking myself after the tournament for all the mistakes I made. I have learned my lesson enough times in the past that it is almost always better to chose a deck or type of deck that you will be comfortable playing over any sort of complicated concoction that seemed great at the last minute.
The UWR delver deck was an archetype that I had played in the PTQ season earlier this year, finishing in the top 8 of both PTQs that I played in with it. After a weekend in which my friends Brandon Gade and Dan Jessup took down two separate PTQs in the northeast with the same list, it became clear to me how powerful it was. The beauty of UWR Delver is that you are doing the same thing vs. every deck and if they don't have a quick way to interact with you they will die. As it turns out, even if they do have a quick way to interact they will often lose. The deck has so much reach with Snapcaster plus 10 burn spells that your creatures rarely have to do all the work. If it hadn't been for some discouraging results playing the deck online in the previous weeks, I would have never jumped ship, but fortunately our testing led me to hop back on just in time for Columbus.
Here is the list I played:
There were a few differences between my list and a stock one you might have seen online. Most notable is probably the inclusion of
Pillar of Flame. This slot belonged to
Spell Pierce during the PTQ season, but I felt that the format had moved more towards creature-based decks. It is at its best against Naya Pod, where exiling
Kitchen Finks,
Murderous Redcap, and even Kiki-Jiki (can't come back with
Eternal Witness) were relevant for me throughout the weekend. Just having 6 ways to kill a turn 1 Birds or Hierarch on the draw is nice as well. Another option was
Forked Bolt, but I felt being able to get
Kitchen Finks out of the way was much more important than the possibility of killing two mana guys or
Lingering Souls tokens.
The other two notable main deck choices were the absence of
Eiganjo Castle and the decision to play a
Mana Leak in the slot that used to be a fourth Geist of St. Traft. My reasoning for not having Castle was the following: it is not very often that you lose because you have resolved a Geist and can't find a way to break through blockers. Sure, it happens, but the deck is very good at getting blockers out of the way, and sometimes all you need is a 4 damage burn spell anyway. I wanted my mana to be as consistent as possible and
Moorland Haunt is already pushing it in a 3 color deck with few colorless mana symbols. I may certainly be wrong seeing as how the other two decks in the top 8 played the castle, but I saw the haunt as a card that would let you win some games you wouldn't otherwise win, whereas the castle was sort of a win more.
As for my sideboard, casting
Twisted Image was the most fun I had all weekend and I highly recommend you try it some time. The
Sword of War and Peace is there for BW Tokens, which is a rough matchup, but also great in the mirror and comes in vs. Jund and Burn. The
Surgical Extraction was an idea I had on the car ride over. I intended it to replace a second
Relic of Progenitus for graveyard hate, with the bonus of being an instant (for Delver/Snapcaster) and coming in with the
Molten Rain package for a pseudo
Sowing Salt effect against Tron. Good luck beating this deck with a turn 7
Wurmcoil Engine.
On to the tournament itself.
Rounds 1-3 Byes
Round 4 - Joe Pace, Naya Summoning Trap (2-0)
His lands and early mana guys made me think he was on
Birthing Pod for the early part of game 1. I Remanded a
Primeval Titan which he never recast, although I'm not sure why. I Mana Leaked a
Through the Breach the turn before I won, and made sure to keep that card in mind for the second game. Fortunately for me he never actually cast a
Summoning Trap and I didn't even consider the card until he mentioned it after the match. This made my
Remands a lot less stressful to cast. I won the second game after killing 3 Knights of the Reliquary and getting in there with Geist a few times.
Round 5 - Michael Simon, Naya Pod (1-1-1)
Michael was sporting a magic cruise T-shirt and his nails were painted the colors of the five mana symbols. I geared myself for some sort of outlandish matchup, but it turned out he was just on Naya Pod. We had a very drawn out game 1, where he resolved an early Pod and I was stuck trying to fight through endless
Kitchen Finks and Restoration Angels. Game 2 I won pretty quickly, while the third was another extended affair where he had a Pod on the table. I wound up just shy of killing him, although it could have gone either way, as another Finks or 2 drop off the top would have made him a favorite to win. This was my first of two unintentional draws with Naya Pod. The problem is that the games you win can be fairly quick, but the games you lose generally involve you killing almost all of their creatures and eventually succumbing to the inevitability of a
Birthing Pod. This takes a while, but it is possible to literally kill every single threat they present, so I would be wary of conceding prematurely.
Round 6 - Akil Steele Team Italia (2-0)
Akil's deck seemed to contain infinite removal:
Lightning Bolt and Helix,
Mortify,
Go for the Throat, and
Damnation were the ones I saw. I kept a one lander Game 1, which seemed like a bad idea once he killed everything I put on the table. However, I managed to draw some lands and a certain hexproof ghost came down to save the day. A
Remand on
Elspeth Tirel sealed the deal. Game 2 he started with
Relic of Progenitus and
Circle of Protection: Red, which combined with all the removal I saw game 1 made me feel like I was in a rough spot. He had mulliganed though, and didn't draw any spot removal for my 3 Steppe Lynxes. He showed me his hand of
Pristine Angels afterwards and we both agreed they probably should have come out for this matchup.
Round 7 - Alexander John, Esper Control (2-0)
Alexander's control deck did not put up much of a fight either game. In the first, he just didn't have enough answers for my early threats, and in the second he was stuck on two lands with no white mana to cast the Path or
Rest for the Weary in his hand.
Round 8 - Brian DeMars, Bant (2-1)
This was a feature match and you can read about it in the event coverage. I felt like the matchup should have been similar to Naya Pod but more difficult. Where Pod has a lot of extra mana guys and random one of creatures which don't do much, Bant has more actual threats and access to removal and counters.
Round 9 - Hans Knapp, Esper Control (2-0)
I knew that my friend had played against a guy named Hans on Esper control, and he mentioned
Damnation, which helped, but Hans had a variety of unexpected cards. Game 1 was very strange, as he did away with all my creatures with a mixture of discard and removal (including
Slaughter Pact!) plus Snapcaster. I was sitting on all Helices and Bolts though, and was able to burn him out from 14 life, before he could really get things going with
Gifts Ungiven and Thirst for Knowledges. Game 2 I drew all of my Geists plus
Moorland Haunt, which is an all-star in a grindy control matchup like this. There was a heart-wrenching moment when I tapped out at the end of his turn to make a spirit and put lethal on board and he cast
Consume the Meek on his own end step for a Geist and two spirits. I had a
Mana Leak in hand, but couldn't envision anything that bad he could do with five mana. Little did I know… Good thing I had a backup Geist.
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Round 10 - David Ochoa, Naya Pod (2-1)
This was another feature match and you can check out the GP Columbus coverage. Game 2 I kept the following hand on the draw:
Sacred Foundry,
Steppe Lynx,
Remand,
Lightning Bolt,
Path to Exile,
Snapcaster Mage,
Serum Visions. I missed my land drop for several turns, but still made a pretty close game of it. My logic was that I had a threat plus a good amount of removal and a way to dig for more lands. It had the potential to be a great draw. It was still probably my loosest keep of the tournament, and in Ochoa's words, one land
Steppe Lynx might have been “a little ambitious.”
Round 11 - Adam Miller, Naya Pod (1-1-1)
This match was fairly standard and went as I described earlier. I probably should have conceded Game 1 a little earlier, but you never know how many Path to Exiles/ Snapcasters in a row you will draw. We only got in a few turns of Game 3, and he drew his third land on turn 4 of extra turns to drop Finks, which prevented me from killing him on turn 5, and probably would have swung the game back in his favor in the long run.
Round 12 - Michael Vasovski, Naya Pod (2-0)
I had quick draws and was able to deal with whatever he put on the table, despite him having what he described as the best hand he could hope for game 1.
Round 13 - Orrin Beasley, Jund (0-2)
This match was a win and in for either of us. That being said, it was a little disappointing that he dealt about 10 times as much damage to himself as I did to him (one attack with an unflipped delver). I mulliganed both games, and got the spells ripped from my hand as my deck made an embarrassing show of doing absolutely nothing.
Round 14 - Joshua Lalo, American Delver (2-0)
My first mirror! Game 1 began with an uphill battle when he dropped a turn 2
Isochron Scepter imprinting
Magma Jet to my
Delver of Secrets. He was stuck on three lands though with no white, while I flipped Delver, getting in a few hits thanks to
Remand and
Mana Leak. After a few turns of feeling helpless, the Saint himself appeared from the top of my deck and Josh was unable to scry into a Geist of his own. Game 2 featured a very awkward situation where I had a flipped Delver and Josh had a Scepter on
Remand, but no removal. I was unwilling to play anything into
Remand, so he was taking three for a few turns. We had to call a judge near the end because I had him at two, while he had himself at five. There was no way for either of us to really prove whether or not an extra turn of “attack, go” had occurred, so they went with his life total as a default. This is a lesson, confirm with your opponent as often as possible any life total changes.
Round 15 - Justin Geary, Naya Pod (2-0)
Just another round of Pod. Geist did good work this match, as he usually does whenever he lands on an empty or near-empty board. The most memorable thing about this match was when I cast
Twisted Image on a
Birds of Paradise with three exalted triggers on the stack, then flashed it back on a Hierarch in the same situation next turn. This was actually relevant, as I was at less than five life and he was on a beatdown plan.
At this point I was ecstatic to find myself in another Grand Prix Top 8. It felt like I had been crushing the tournament, but because of my two draws, I had needed to win the last two rounds to make it. I was in sixth place, so I could look forward to being on the draw for most if not all of top 8. Not an ideal position, but the deck functions surprisingly well on the draw, since that extra card is often going to be another way to remove an opponent's defenses.
Quarterfinals - Chris Piland, American Delver (2-1)
This one is also available in the event coverage. Essentially all three games came down to who had more Geists. The mirror often plays out like that, since both decks have more than enough ways to kill each other's targetable threats.
Semifinals - Lucas Siow, RUG Delver (0-2)
My tournament came to a crashing halt, as four unkeepable hands led to two double mulligans. I put up little resistance as his
Tarmogoyfs went to town. In theory though, it did not seem like a good matchup. Shackles is a nightmare and he has answers to my early guys, plus Goyfs, which are a pain.
Going forward with Modern, I would expect Delver decks to be a main contender, and for the mirror to become a bigger factor in testing. The format is still too open for decks to go all out on anti-agro cards, but I expect an increase in cards like sweepers and
Forked Bolt. A lot of my wins could have been losses if my opponent had just had an answer to my one drop, and I expect in the future they will. I would like to try out the RUG delver deck, which was not popular but seemed to do very well, keeping Gerard Fabiano on top of the standings throughout the weekend, and putting Lucas in the finals.
Thanks for reading, and I appreciate any criticism constructive or otherwise.
-Max
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