I have been joking since the introduction of Alara Reborn about building a hand control deck featuring Thoughtsieze, Meddling Mage, Vendillion Clique, Tidehollow Sculler, Runed Halo and Thought Hemorrhage. Courtesy of Glenn Goddard at Sum Mesa Events — the people that flew me out to LA to gunsling at the Conflux Prerelease — comes a more realustic take on that theme with only two colors and a manabase that doesn’t roll over to Anathemancer that earned its pilot a berth at Nationals via a New Mexico Regional Championship.

Dump Truck Update
David Daniel — Top 4
New Mexico Regionals 2009

4 Meddling Mage
4 Sower of Temptation
3 Vendillion Clique
4 Peek
4 Cryptic Command
4 Broken Ambitions
3 Negate
2  Remove Soul
3 Wrath of God
1 Austere Command
4 Path to Exile
4 Mystic Gate
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Mutavault
4 Faerie Conclave
2 Plains
6 Island

Sideboard:
4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Wall of Denial
3 Windborn Muse
2 Austere Command
2 Pithing Needle
1 Negate

Glenn wrote that when he first caught wind of the Nationals qualifying deck, featuring Peek, from his Regionals he “was pretty skeptical”. With such a known metagame the Meddling Mage can often accurately nail a key card based simply on the first land drop of the game. If you saw Windbrisk Heights you would no doubt name Spectral Procession and Spinerock Knoll might entice you to name Swans or Seismic Assault. But the aforementioned Peek means you don’t even need to guess if you don’t want to — you can either cantrip-look at their hand or even disrupt two cards with a Vendillion Clique into Meddling Mage.

Grand Prix Anaheim 2003 Champion Ben Rubin

The deck reminds me of Ben Rubin’s Dump Truck deck from a half decade of Extended seasons ago that won Grand Prix Anaheim with four Meddling Mage and a mere pair of Peeks.

Dump Truck
Ben Rubin — Champion
GP Anaheim 2003

4  Caves of Koilos
4  Flooded strand
3  Island
2  Plains
4  Polluted Delta
2  Skycloud Expanse
2  Swamp
2  Underground River
3  Exalted Angel
4  Meddling Mage
4  Shadowmage Infiltrator
4  Brainstorm
3  Deep Analysis
3  Diabolic Edict
1  Disenchant
4  Duress
2  Peek
3  Seal of Cleansing
1  Smother
1  Tsabo’s Web
4  Vindicate

Sideboard:

4  Chill
3  Chrome Mox
1  Damping Matrix
1  Energy Flux
1  Lobotomy
1  Sphere of Resistance
1  Upheaval
3  Vampiric Tutor

I have not actually played with the deck yet but Glenn reports that it has favorable match-ups against Black-white Tokens, Green-white Tokens, Bant, Turbo Fog, and Sanity Grinding. He suspects — like I do — that it has a good match up against Cascade Swans but that deck was barely on the scene when this debuted two weekends ago. One thing that may work against this deck is a reportedly bad match-up against Faeries, which may be on the rise in the wake of Grand Prix Barcelona.

Going into Regionals, I was pretty sure that my deck choice (obviously Jund Ramp) was solid. After hours of play and discussion with Mikey J, I was convinced that Jund was the deck to play for the tournament.

I woke up Saturday morning to what looked like rain outside. I hit the streets around 7:30, caught the bus across town, and took the 1 train down to Penn Station to meet up with a bunch of other NY magic players that were also planning on taking the 8:14 train to Edison. I found a seat in the middle of the train and popped on the headphones (LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver) for the hour long ride.

The venue is about a mile walk from the train station in Edison. I joined up with “Siege-Gang Ferrando,” Devon, GCB, Alex B and Regionals first-timer Seong An. Seong easily identified us as Magic players and joined us for the hike through commercial New Jersey.

We arrived at the venue (basement of a church) in the middle of a funeral procession and quietly worked our way to the side entrance. I am 6 cards short going in, still missing 1 Karrthus, 1 Cloudthresher and 4 Rampant Growth. I find fivewithflores and he informs me that the dealers are sold out of Karrthus. Luis “Not Vargas” Neiman hooks me up with the Rampant Growths. Lucky for me, Seong had a Karrthus and Cloudthresher that I could mise. I register and write down my decklist and pretty soon the round starts.

Round 1, Mike with 5c Control

Game 1 we both mulligan to 6. I win the die roll and make Civic Wayfinder, then Kitchen Finks, and they take him from 20 to 0 after being joined by a Treetop Village a few turns later. Mike misses a few land drops and I’m not sure he even played a spell at all.

I figured him for 5c control because of all his vivid lands and side in the Anathemancer/Karrthus/Primal Command package.

Game 2 I mulligan and we trade hits back and forth with with early finks. Eventually Mike turtles up behind a Wall of Reverence and a Plumeveil. He counters my relevant threats while gaining life each turn. Eventually he finds a Broodmate Dragon and finishes me off.

Game 3 we both keep 7 and I have a strong hand which includes none other than my borrowed Karrthus. I begin chipping away early with a Anathemancer, bolting him for 4 and getting him down to 12 before he gets a Wall of Reverence going. On my turn 6 I have a Broodmate and Primal Command, but opt for the Command to try to fish up another Anathemancer. He counters it, untaps, and slams down a Broodmate on his 6th turn. I pray for 7th land but draw Rampant Growth instead and have to settle for playing my own Broodmate. Mike plays Cruel Ultimatum, and I show him the Karrthus I am forced to discard in my hand. At this point MJF has found his way to my table, sees the board, and declares me the winner. Of course I rip a Makeshift Mannequin to bring back Karrthus, steal his dragons, and attack him for 23. He blocks the 7/7 with his wall and stays alive at 6 life. Mike untaps and Wraths the board but two turns later I find my 7th land and Unearth Anathemancer for 9.

1-0
2-1

Round 2, Justin with Red Deck

I win the die roll again and get to go first. Justin has a slow hand with no action until a turn 3 Ram Gang. I take hits and accelerate, then play three consecutive Broodmate Dragons.

Game 2 Justin keeps a hand that I can only assume has multiple Demigods. His turn 3 play is a Everlasting Torment, which prevents me from gaining life off a Kitchen Finks… but doesn’t prevent the Finks from beating him down. Justin never finds his 5th land, and I follow up my Finks with a Dragon and finish it.

2-0
4-1

Round 3, Noah with GW Tokens

Game 1 our hero is again on the play but mulligans a hand 3 Forest, 3 Cloudthresher, and Gift of the Gargantuan. I mulligan into three consecutive no-land hands and obviously get rolled when I keep on 3. I am pretty confident in that mulligan, as Gift is not an ideal turn 3 play, and that hand had no hope against an aggressive deck.

Game 2 I keep a 7 card “speculative” hand with a Fallout, Mannequin, Civic, and Gift. The Fallout is dead as his draw consisted of Dauntless Escort and Liege. My first Gift shows me 4 lands, while my second Gift shows me 4 creatures, none of which are the Shriekmaw I would need to turn the game around. I finally draw a Shriekmaw when I am on 1 and Noah has three or four men on board. In retrospect that may have been a borderline keep, but I had the right lands to Fallout if he had had a bear-into-procession draw I was hoping to see.

2-1
4-3

Round 4, David with Bant

Game 1 is the only game I won against David, and it was the game I deserved to lose. I made multiple mistakes in this game, the worst of which was not using Banefire on his Bant Bird and playing Shriekmaw on his Rhox War Monk instead of Rafiq. By not killing Rafiq I ended up having to chump block most of the game while working him down to 7 with the Shriekmaw. The turn that I would have to chump with the Maw I drew a lethal Banefire to steal the win.

Game 2 I drew all my Banefires and none of my Shriekmaws. I kept trading 1 for 1 with his guys, hoping to draw some action for the Mannequins in my hand. I run out of answers and never get a threat, and finally succumb to an exalted BoP.

Game 3 was really close, and I am sure I made a mistake somewhere because I felt like I should have won it. Instead, my final life total shows David ending the game with 70+ life. David got out a Behemoth Sledge and kept threatening to crush me with giant, doublestriking lifelinkers. I cleared the board multiple times with Shriekmaws and Caldera Helion, but David always had another Rafiq or Rhox War Monk to pick up the Sledge. We go to turns and David continues to play threats while I stop drawing answers.

I am pretty sure that I sideboarded wrong for this match. I left in Volcanic Fallout, which is dead against the cards that matter. I boarded like I would against GW, bringing out Dragons and some gifts for Helions, Maw, and Terror; not realizing that Dragon is my best threat here since he has no way he can block a flying creature other than Birds. Instead I should have taken out Fallouts and a Gifts for the Primals, which could have been used to remove his equipment or search up removal.

2-2
5-5

Thoroughly dissapointed, and tilting pretty badly after losing a matchup that I think is pretty favorable, I vent to Mike and he convinces me to stay in to try and get some packs and practice with the deck.

Round 5, Adam with Naya 5-power

Game 1 I lose my first die roll of the day and Adam comes out slow with a turn 3 5/4. I play a Civic, take a hit from the Beast, and follow up next turn with a Finks. I take another hit and Adam plays Spellbreaker Behemoth. Luckily I have a Shriekmaw + Mannequin, which is followed up by a dragon. I swing him down to 5 and finish him with Banefire.

Game 2 plays out pretty much the same way, except now I have more Shriekmaws and a couple Primal Commands to go get them. I don’t remember the specifics of this game other than that I slowed him down early by evoking a Shriekmaw on his Bloomtender. I ended the game at 22 so it must have been pretty one-sided.

3-2
7-5

Round 6, Eric with BW tokens.

I win my 5th die roll of the day and keep a hand that is gas against anything but BW tokens: Civic Wayfinder, Shriekmaw, Fallout, Mannequin, 3 Lands. However, Eric has the triple Sculler + Glorious Anthem draw. My plays this game were Civic Wayfinder and Makeshift Mannequin targeting Civic Wayfinder.

Game 2 is much closer. I burn 2 Banefire early to kill an Elspeth and Ajani, and have a Fallout to keep him off his triple Winbrisk Heights. Eric has a Bitterblossom and we are each getting in damage when we can. I make a big mistake towards the end of the game: I have a Civic and two 4/4 fliers on the board, while Eric has a medium sized token army. I play a Helion here to wipe his board, and foolishly choose to Devour my 2/2. I had a Mannequin in hand, which could have been used 2 turns later to wrath him again. Instead I make an irrelevant 4/4 and lose the game a few turns later when Eric is able to pop all his Heights (Cloudgoat, Ajani, and something else) and slowly supersizes his team. I lose this game with Eric on 4.

3-3
7-7

Seong watches me take a third loss and tells me he is dropping and heading back. I decide to drop here so I can return his cards, and we end up traveling back to the city together.

Despite practicing with the deck, I made too many mistakes and put myself out of contention. I still think the deck is great and I am planning on playing it in any upcoming PTQs. Mike finished 6-2, you can see his tournament report on his blog, and it looks like a couple players made top 8 with the deck as well. I encourage anyone who is undecided on a PTQ deck to consider Jund ramp as it is favored against a lot of decks in the field, and seems to be 50/50 against its worst matchups.

How did your Regionals go? What did you end up playing? I know (from Twitter) that a couple people did pretty well. Let us know how your tournament went in the comments.

~WillPoP

BDM and Mike discuss the results from NJ Regionals.

WARNING: Some background noise.

Post Regionals Part 4

BDM and Mike discuss the results from NJ Regionals.

WARNING: Some background noise.

Post Regionals Part 3

BDM and Mike discuss the results from NJ Regionals.

WARNING: Some background noise.

Post Regionals Part 2

BDM and Mike discuss NJ Regionals, Jund, and T2.

WARNING: Some background noise.

Post Regionals Part 1

On Tuesday I was testing for Standard with Matt “Ferran Dynamo” Ferrando.  We had all these tokens on the table and the combat phases felt like sealed deck, and I was just hating it.

So I called Jake Van Lunen, who often has some crazy idea up his sleeve.  It turns out the crazy idea was already out there (Ferran Dynamo had heard about it that morning, but was keeping it from me!): play a bunch of Fogs and Howling Mines, and just pretend the combat phase doesn’t exist.  I was in love.

I couldn’t find the list online, so I proxied up my own version.  I played a few games with Ferran Dynamo and it worked exactly like I thought it would.  When I saw the original list later that week I was unimpressed, and refined my own version.  Here’s the maindeck I ran on Saturday:

4 Holy Day
4 Pollen Lullaby
4 Angelsong
4 Cryptic Command
3 Negate
3 Runed Halo
4 Howling Mine
4 Jace Beleren
4 Font of Mythos
4 Mind Stone
4 Mystic Gate
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Arcane Sanctum
3 Reflecting Pool
3 Plains
4 Island

I did too little testing, and upon arriving at the site I heard everyone asking for Font of Mythos and Holy Day from the dealers, so my sideboard was a complete mess.  I hadn’t the foggiest idea what my plan was against anyone, I just knew I needed some Forge-Tenders and Celestial Purges.  I had singleton Platinum Angel, singleton Wrath of God, and even singleton Hoofprints of the Stag.  I only squeezed in 2 Forge-Tenders.  2 Pithing Needle was a good addition, but mostly it was ugly.

Round 1 I got the mirror.  My opponent drew too many cards off his own mines and whatnot one turn, so he got a gameloss– but the judge told us to finish that game as if it was game 2 after he put the extra card back.  That’s a new one!  I won game 3 on the back of drawing both my Forge-Tenders and dealing 18 with them.  Seriously.  Hoofprints finished the job.

Round 2 I beat a 5-color deck that seemed to have no plan against me at all.  He killed all my Jace’s, but he was drawing first off Howling Mines, so…

Round 3 I cast my first fog effects of the day, and lost to Elementals.  My lack of preperation was on full display as I forgot that Runed Halo didn’t protect Jace from attackers, and I learned that Elementals runs a maindeck Wispmare when it destroyed said Runed Halo at an inopportune time.  I had another Runed Halo out naming “Banefire”, which of course isn’t in that deck.

Things turned around Round 4 as no opponent ever appeared.  I watched a R/B burn mirror match and thought to myself, “I hope I don’t play against one of them next round.”

I didn’t, I rattled off some wins (finally getting to play against B/W tokens once, which is basically a bye), and was 6-1 needing one more win to top 8.  I was paired against Alec Nevins, a good man whom I would normally root for.  He was with B/W tokens.  Next to us was another Fog v. B/W tokens, and if Fog won Alec and I could draw in.

During these matches, Osyp wandered over to watch.  Someone must have been complaining about how stupid the Fog deck is because Osyp began to extrapolate on the beauties of the deck.  It went something like this:

“I love that deck!  If you’re a decent player, you can’t lose with it.  I want to play it so much! It does my 2 favorite things in Magic, draw lots of cards and piss off your opponent!”

In the neighboring match, there was confusion about the timing of a Cryptic Command, and a pretty horrible ruling by the judge on the matter put the Fog player down a game (he would lose game 2 and force Alec & I to play it out).  Osyp proceeded to chew out the judge, finishing ‘er off with: “If you had made that ruling against me, I would have gotten banned: on Monday morning on magicthegathering.com it would say, ‘Osyp Lebedowicz kills local judge.’”

In the midst of this performance, I had lost game 2 to a barrage of discard and a well-timed Austere Command, and was in game 3.  Somehow, I hit a huge glut of not-fogs, and was bailed out by Alec forgeting to attack one turn (most of his guys were tapped from Pollen Lullaby clash, but he had enough power to kill me with the Marsh Flitter with tokens he had cast).  Then, on the last turn I needed to fog, all I had was Cryptic Command.  Naturally, I hit him with it and bounced his Mutavault, offering him the game on a plate if he would activate his ‘Vault, sac to Marsh Flitter, and fizzle my Command.  He must have been distracted by Osyp’s antics, too, because he missed it.

On to the top 8, which (I’m told) was predominantly B/W tokens decks.  Of course I got paired against the guy running Qasali Pridemage, Maelstrom Pulse, Tidehollow Sculler and Bloodbraid Elf, with Thoughtsieze in the ‘board.  I pulled out game 1, just barely.  Games 2 and 3 I had land-heavy hands, no Halo to protect me from Thoughtseizes or Scullers, no Pithing Needle to stop Pridemages, and couldn’t get a howling mine effect to stick through his removal.  I ended both games with more than half the land in my deck in play, without every going halfway through my deck.

I was about 10 Total Rating points from q’ing that way, so if I can put in a decent showing in Seattle and the LCQ’s at Honolulu, maybe I’ll be at Nationals yet…

The Fog deck is great.  It changes the rules and makes life very difficult for anyone who is unprepared.  However, I don’t think anyone is going to be unprepared anymore.  Aside from me…

-gcb

Mike and Will talk about the various sideboarding strategies of the Jund ramp deck in preparation for Regionals tomorrow.

Burger Cast Part 2

Mike and Will talk up the Jund deck one last time the day before Regionals.

Note/Correction: The Fog deck discussed plays Negate in addition to Cryptic Command, meaning the Primal Command strategy mentioned may not be so absolute. However, it seems likely that the Negates would get boarded out in game 2 when the opponent sees they can only counter Gift of the Gargantuan and Rampant Growth with it. The damage strategy used to win game applies to game 2 as well.

Burger Cast Part 1

Wizards of the Coast just announced that there will be a new product, Planeschase, that will augment multiplayer play. There will be more details coming on Monday in Mark Rosewater’s column but until then we have been left to our own devices to draw conclusions from the following items in the official release.

Planechase Symbol

• There will be four Planechase Game Packs released on September 4th, 2009: Elemental Thunder, Metallic Dreams, Strike Force, and Zombie Empire.
• Each game pack will contain 10 all-new plane cards, a ready-to-play 60-card deck, a six-sided planar die and a Planechase strategy insert with multiplayer rules.
• Each of the 60-card decks will include 8 rares, and will be composed of cards from throughout Magic’s history - including a preview card from Zendikar.
• The 10 oversized plane cards comprise a planar deck. They feature all-new artwork depicting some of the more exotic realms of the Magic multiverse.
• Each of the cards in the 60-card decks will be black-bordered and tournament legal. This means that these cards are legal for use in any tournaments where the original printings are still legal.
• Planechase release events will be held September 4-6, 2009. Watch magicthegathering.com this summer for details.
• Initial Concept and Game Design: Brian Tinsman (lead), Aaron Forsythe, Peter Knudson, and Kenneth Nagle
• Final Game and Deck Development: Mike Turian (lead), Dave Guskin, Peter Knudson, Scott Larabee, and Mark Purvis, with contributions from Mark L. Gottlieb
• MSRP: $19.99

I do know that the new product will be playable within the Elder Dragon Highlander format ( a format I have recently started carrying around a deck for in case anyone wants to grab a game at Regionals this weekend) but it is by no means limited to that format.

My recent forays into EDH have gotten  me to thinking about older multiplayer formats that we used to run at Grey Matter events and Neutral Ground.

Some art from Planechase

One of the most popular and memorable eventss was always the Grand Melee that we held after each of our big tournaments. There were often upwards of 200 players seated in a circle and playing for a variety of prizes that ranged from first kill to bounties on specific players heads (which were often placed there by players outside the event) to highest kill counts. There were obviously all sorts of degeneracies that occurred (it was during these events that Zvi first stood out asa future evil genius) and the events generated their own unique banned list and specific rules. When one player killed an entire table of nealry 100 players in one fell swoop the concept of gravestone counters were introduced, which meant that when a player was killed his seat would remain until the active player passed their turn. This meant that players could not “pull” players into their range by killing players on either side of them.

More art from Planechase

Sometimes you would find that the games would bog down — with the meter running on a hotel ballroom no less — and we began to pack a deck of cards with global affects that would be randomly put into play after every turn around the table. Cards lilke Howling Mine, Mana Flare, and Underworld Dreams were put into play for everyone and it would usually be just the prod that players needed to move the game along. I have to wonder if the Planechase cards won’t serve a similar function or if they are like the Vanguard cards that used to be a part of Arena play. The Vanguard cards would change your rules for the game; altering your hand size, life totals, and the way your cards fucntioned.

I think my favorite Melee format was the old Anaconda Sealed Deck Draft Melee that we would do late nights at Neutral Ground. It was a Sealed Deck draft with as many players as wanted to play. Players would draft a card from a Sealed Deck and pass left, just like a normal draft. Except in this format you had to draft lands as well. As an addtional wrinkle you could snake cards in and out of the deck each pick as long as you had one more card than you started with after each pass. So if the deck came to you three picks in and you wanted four cards from it, you could slip the three cards you have already picked back into the deck and take all four cards you wanted. The tension of drafting the lands made for a fun late night format best played out in diners with accompanying adult beverages.

Hmmmm….might be time to bust out some Ice Age Sealed Decks with some other members from the senior super series come September.