I know, I know - it was atrocious!
play some null rods, creeping tarpits and krosan grips
He played like anyone would after 8-9 rounds of solid Legacy. You make mistakes and you forget to see lines. It happens. Jeff, your poker face, I've heard, is one of the best. Great job, and congrats on winning some money so you can stop playing with WB dual lands #pimp problems
-Matt
"Don't mess with me, lady. I've been drinking with skeletons."
I write articles about Legacy Death and Taxes. Check them out.
That's not a winner's mentality. I can assure you that the people I've played against in elimination rounds with that thought process tend to lose. Winning is the goal, period. Doing anything less should only feel good in retrospect.
Understandable, but just means that it's something to work on. I know that I'm weak in this area too - made a ton of mistakes in the first game of my finals. Seconded on fixing the WB duals!
Congrats on the top 8! But yeah...it's good that you're not trying to delude yourself.
I wanted to talk about the Miracles board plan. It seems that my plan is a bit different from what I've seen on camera at GP Paris and in Dallas.
- I feel like Thoughtseize is awful in this matchup. The only possible way it could be good is what happened game 2 - you played Thoughtseize turn 1, took his Top, and he didn't draw another and had a greedy keep. That's so many things that had to go right - both of you have it in your opener, you had to be on the play. Every other time you cast Thoughtseize in the match, it did nothing. Their spells are redundant besides Top and they play off the top well.
- I'm not sure if I saw you bring in Golgari Charm, but I've seen others. That card is really marginal. You don't want to have a reactive anti-enchantment card rotting in your hand when they don't have enchantments, and Miracles is about 50% to board out the enchantments anyway. You can deal with pesky creatures like Clique with Decay if really necessary.
I did like that you kept in Force. Their deck has so few relevant spells - Jace, Entreat, conditionally Terminus or Swords - and the battle isn't really about card advantage. They'll win that fight. It's about lands in play and board presence vs. life total.
One thing that I'm torn on is Daze. I've been boarding all of them out play and draw because they can get out of range and play around it so easily. What do you guys think? Maybe 1-2 just to surprise them on the play?
About the BUG vs. RUG debate:
I've always felt that RUG is 55%, maybe more in our favor. We're trying to play lands and cast spells, so of course they can beat us sometimes. However, we have a low curve (compared to non-Delver decks), plenty of mana sources once Deathrite gets online, ways to manage their threats (DRS, Decay), and better 2-for-1s (Hymn, Lili). I don't like leaving in Daze on the draw because going down a land is such a real cost in this matchup. Hymn is slow too, so you probably don't want more than 2 on the draw. On the play it's ok to bring in a couple Dazes (although still not excited about them) and Hymns, probably cutting Forces.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
"Don't mess with me, lady. I've been drinking with skeletons."
I write articles about Legacy Death and Taxes. Check them out.
Thanks, Matt! I've finished foiling what I can (I'm still waiting on my foil altered Lilianas to get back from Steve Argyle so I can replace that gross one I have to use in the SB!) and now I can focus on the lands again. Man, those Seas are going to kill me...
Hah, I was just happy to be there and it may not be the best mentality, but I snap signed the "Split the prize in the T8" form when I found out I was paired against Joe Lossett :)
Thanks! I know that I'm in no way an expert on this and I still see myself making mistakes with the deck, so I have plenty more room to grow before I'll feel like I can actually play the deck well (but that's one of the powerful things about the deck - that when played optimally, it's such a beast!).
Re: Miracles - In the T8, I boarded: -2 Disfigure, -2 Abrupt Decay, -4 Daze, +1 Vendilion Clique, +1 Liliana of the Veil, +2 Golgari Charm, +1 Krosan Grip, +1 Envelop, +1 Force of Will, +1 Surgical Extraction
Here was my thought process: Because I got to see his decklist, I knew there were 2 Supreme Verdicts in the side. From speaking with /reading up on Miracles, it seems like what is getting more popular is the idea of boarding out the Counterbalances to try and blank our Abrupt Decays. I think they have to bring in RIP though because of simply how powerful it is against Goyf and DRS. Golgari Charm protects our guys both from Verdict and kills RIP, thus I brought in Golgari Charms for ADs since I suspected he would bring out CBs (which my Surgical in G3 did confirm my suspicions). The Surgical has been something I've been trying against Miracles. You can use it to screw with their Tops when they pop it to Miracle and if you can get a Terminus with it, you're in great shape, imo (I really wanted to catch Terminus or Entreat, but was fine reducing value of SCM and getting rid of the other StP). I'm curious to hear discussion on that though. I didn't bring in the Spell Pierces because I simply have not had good experiences with it in the past although maybe I should've brought them in over the Thoughtseizes?
I brought all the Dazes out for the exact reason you mentioned - they so easily get their mana online and can fairly easily play around it. It's also particularly bad against Terminus, which I feel is the second key spell in the matchup (first one being Top). I'm not a fan of the 1-2 plan because I believe Daze gets the most value early, so having 1-2 just means we have fairly low odds of seeing it when it's most optimal but we still have it in there to draw late when it's terrible.
While Top is just insane against our hand disruption, I still like Thoughtseize for information and to take a critical spell they might be holding. Getting a Supreme Verdict or a Jace (and of course taking the Top on T1 when you're on the play) is huge and gives you an idea of how far you need to extend into the board or not. Just my thoughts on it though. Most of my Thoughtseizes came late when they had much less value, and of course the early one was nuts because both of us kept super greedy hands.
Also, I'm always looking for input on my plays / mistakes, so I'd welcome any thoughts on my plays in the T8. I do believe that I massively screwed up the first Liliana in G3. I should've just held the Delver back to block SCM and +1'd her to strip away the Supreme Verdict I knew was in his hand. The knowledge of that there really affected how I had to play the rest of the game since I had to try not to get wrecked by it.
You really didn't make huge misplays. I think you didn't have to use the surgical on the plow though because there are just more important stuff for you to surgical I n stead of that.
When I played bant. I consistently beat miracles because I had a steady stream of creatures and never laid more than one at a time. All the counters were to stop win cons. And I just let my creatures die. Granted. I never played lossett with bant nor does TA have as many creatures as bant
I played Joe L. on Saturday on MTGO. He played Miracles and I played BUG. I lost 2-0.
First, Joe is a good player. He knows the lines. Plays lands, addresses threats, wait for an opportune moment and drops Jace. Jace is a real issue for BUG, because outside of Maelstrom Pulse (which nobody runs), V. Clique is our only way to deal with it (and Joe runs 3 Cliques of his own and 2 Karakas).
Given the current configuration, I would board out Abrupt Decay and Daze on the draw. I would consider keeping in Daze on the play just to support the tempo. Our best bet is to win the game by turn 7-8 - play aggressively and eek out a win with creatures and disruption.
If Miracles is a real issue, then we will need to reconfigure the sideboard with some number of Sinkhole, Winter Orb, Sylvan Library, etc.
"Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."
VS. Miracles, Stifle might be our best card because it stops mana development, card selection, and miracle triggers (plus is decent versus other match ups).
"Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference."
I feel like I may have been too harsh - top 8'ing is a great accomplishment and you definitely played well. I appreciate your attitude that there's always room for improvement, I try to keep that perspective too. Magic is a hard game, no one plays it perfectly.
Interesting to hear your thought process on boarding against Miracles. I haven't really played against players with multiple Verdicts, so your Golgari Charms make a lot more sense. As long as you're not clogging your deck with a bunch of reactive cards (Charm and Decay), I can definitely get behind it. We had a pretty good discussion with the Miracles guys about Surgical in the matchup and I believe the conclusion was that it can sometimes do work but for the most part isn't worth discarding a card. You can mess up their Tops a little, but you have to have it at exactly the right time. Again, don't want to have too many reactive cards.
About Pierce vs. Thoughtseize - they can always float Jace or Entreat with Top, so Pierce is much better. Once the game goes past about turn 3 or 4, you have to willing to Pierce pretty much anything, but you can usually at least trade it for a card. That's the worst case. The best case is that they jam a bomb into your Pierce (hopefully while you have a guy in play) and you get to counter it for much less mana than they spent.
Also, just played against Miracles again tonight, still haven't dropped a game in like 4 matches. I've definitely gotten a bit lucky, but I seriously think that this matchup can be improved tremendously with testing. As far as tournament EV vs. time expenditure, testing against Miracles seems very favorable.
Languages and dates for every set. For all you true pimps.
Thanks! Yeah I haven't dropped a match to Miracles in awhile before this but I definitely believe none of the Miracles players I had played were nearly of the caliber of Joe, so that made a huge difference.
Re: Golgari Charm - I agree on not wanting it while keeping in all the AD. I only brought it in to replace AD if I'm expecting them boarding out CB + having Supreme Verdict. Joe's multiple Verdicts made that decision even easier for me.
My maindeck is also a little more geared towards control with the 19 lands, TNNs, and the maindeck Sylvan so I feel a little more comfortable there as well.
I like having the maindeck sylvan as well. I seem to miss that card more than regret having it in if i ever take it out.
I still love the idea of running 4 sinkholes.. i wish it just fit in better.
At this point they would be pretty unexpected atleast. I find that this deck is so tight (which i love), its hard to even get them in on the play.
also great run esper.. loved watching you play the deck. nicely done!
Sylvan Library was insane for me. I don't think I lost a game all weekend when I resolved it. It also won me a game when I mulled to 4. I'm pretty greedy so I had cut the 20th land in the main for it, but I've been loving it so far. With it feeling like we're seeing less TNNs (I mean they're still out there but it's not like the flood a few months ago, at least by my perception), and TNN making me already have a glut of 3 drops main, I think just 1 Liliana in the main is fine.
I'm out of town right now (gotta love those drive 4 hours back home after the tournament, get home at 2:30, wake up, drive 3 hours to another city days) but I'll post up a tournament report if I have time when I get home later on today.
I was rocking the Source playmat when I could too!
I'd also practice the UWR Delver and Deathblade matchups quite a bit as well. Seriously, it felt like all I played during the Swiss was some form of SFM deck. I'm lucky in that I feel like I've played those fairly often (especially Deathblade) and knew how to approach and sideboard (at least I found a strategy that has been working for me).
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