Bosh N Roll
08-05-2014, 10:21 PM
Hi everyone, my name is Brian and I play Elves. (Hi Brian!)
This past weekend I took the deck to the Tales of Adventure Comics Eternal Extravaganza. The prizes and promotion for the event were awesome. If you weren’t there I strongly recommend making time for the next one. It’s going to be in about 6 months and the prizes are going to be 40 black border duals.
My local store runs weekly Legacy events as well as one large monthly SCG IQ. With that much legacy in a small and well-defined pool of players I try to switch up my deck choices every week to keep people from metgaming me too hard and to get a feel for the rest of the format. I’ll admit it had been over a month since I brought my little green friends to battle with me. Due to the size and support of this event I decided to dust off my trusty weapon and do my homework to make sure I had the best build I could come up with. I scoured this website’s Decks to Beat: Elves forum, watched videos, and read (in many cases re-read) every article there is to read about Elves. The results of my research were very exciting.
I had been playing the now-standard Green/Black core with a White splash for some sideboard options. The printing of Reclamation Sage made the white splash obsolete. With the ability to destroy enchantments in the main deck, making room in the board for Qasali Pridemage or Harmonic Sliver is wasted space and Gaddock Teeg hasn’t been very good for quite some time now. This change freed me up to try the blue splash for Swan Song that some Elves wizards have been trying lately. I also found a large number of testimonials supporting Wren’s Run Packmaster as a way to break open the grindy midrange matchups, he seemed unreal on paper and I decided to give that a try. Here’s the list:
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
4 Gaea’s Cradle
2 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Heritage Druid
1 Birchlore Ranger
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Wren’s Run Packmaster
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Natural Order
Sideboard:
1 Null Rod
2 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Swan Song
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Natural Order
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Progenitus
The official count for the main event was 267 players making for 9 rounds of Legacy action. I felt really good about my deck and was ready to take on the world.
Round 1: High Tide? Omnitell? Dream Halls?
In game 1 my opponent played a Preordain, then a Ponder, then died to my turn 3 Hoof.
Game 2 I kept a hand with Thoughtseize and the potential to have a fast win. He had a turn zero Leyline of Sanctity to block the Thoughtseize. I spent my first few turns deploying Elves to build up my resources, he spent his turns playing Islands and cantripping. On turn 4 I drew and cast Reclamation Sage. My opponent determined this was worth a Force of Will, pitching Intuition. On the following turn I was able to Natural Order unopposed to close the game without ever seeing him play a real spell.
1-0
Round 2: Pox
My opponent won the roll and started on Cursed Scroll. Great, Pox is a nightmare. I had a turn 1 Llanowar, he had a sinkhole, I had a Cradle for Symiote + Visionary, he had to legend rule his Urborg to make 3 mana and Scroll my Wirewood Symbiote. He never drew a 3rd nonlegendary land and his Scroll went from unbeatable to nice to look at. I was able to grind Symbiote plus Visionary into enough gas to close the game.
Game 2 he had Dark Ritual for Inquisition plus Hymn to Tourach followed by Sinkhole on turn 2. I was never in this game.
Game 3 was a longer grind. I had Natural order in hand and passed the turn with 3 lands and Llanowar Elf in play. He cast Engineered Plague on Elf and passed. I drew Dryad Arbor and passed. He Plagued Dryads. I drew Zenith and got Scavenging Ooze. He had the Innocent Blood. I drew Wirewood Symbiote, he Plagued Insects. I drew Deathrite Shaman, he Plauged Elves again. That was enough to close it out. He had 4 plagues and a removal spell on 5 turns running, any of which untapping would have let me run away with the game. But it was not meant to be. This matchup is tough and I put up the best fight I had.
1-1
Round 3: RUG Delver
This matchup is as good as its pilots. Both decks require a lot of decisions on the razor’s edge and a misstep can end the game on either side. All things being equal, this is a largely positive matchup for Elves. My experience usually gives me the edge against the average RUG Delver pilot.
My opponent and I bantered a little before the match then got to business. He made an audible sigh and slumped in his chair when I fetched a basic Forest and played Llanowar Elves. He knows the matchup is bad news. His turn 1 was Ponder, which is always a welcome sight. Delver of Secrets is the only card they have that matters in Game 1. I was able to fighting through his removal and play around his soft counters and eventually bury him with the Visionary/Symbiote alliance.
Game 2 I had the Abrupt Decay for his early Delver to take the pressure off. I kept my board in a place where there was enough pressure that he’d have to react, but Rough/Tumble wouldn’t be better than a 2-for-1. At one point in the match my opponent Fork Bolted my Symbiote and Quirion Ranger. I bounced the ranger to untap a creature and my opponent Stifled the ability. Word to the wise, returning the creature to your hand is part of the cost. There’s no effect in magic that can stop that creature from leaving play once you activate the ability. So my Ranger was safe in hand and the Stifle kept my other creature from untapping. I cobbled together a win a few turns later.
2-1
Round 4: Miracles
My arch nemesis. Make no mistake friends, this matchup is baaaaaddddddddd. Real bad. It gets a little better after board, but it takes a lot of skill and a little luck to maneuver through the wall that is counterbalance and the cleanup crew that is Terminus.
Game 1 Reclamation Sage was in the opener and got to wipe out an early Counterbalance before the engine came online. With Counterbalance out of the way I was able to dance around his one-for-one counterspells long enough to make him dead to Hoof.
Game 2 He Miracled me good and proper. Counterbalance lock backed up by a second balance, multiple Terminus, all backed by one-for-one removal and counters. Swan Song was gas in the game because he had to Force it to make his Terminus resolve which gave me a short window to draw Natural Order and kill him. I didn’t find it until it was too late though and the game was over.
Game 3 was a drawn out affair in which we threw Counterbalances, Abrupt Decays, Terminuses, Swan Songs, Progenitus, and Council’s Judgments at each other until the board was even with both of us low on action with 5 minutes left on the clock. With our diminished time I planned to make sure he couldn’t win before time ran out and to set up my own win on my last turn in extra time. I used my resources in a way that put enough pressure on him that he had to burn off all the cards in his hand to stay alive. On turn 4 of turns he had Counterbalance and Top in play, 2 lands and 1 fetchland open, no cards in hand, and 4 life. I cast the Natural Order I’d been sandbagging and he spun his top. Cracked his fetchland, spun his top again, and conceded to my Hoof.
3-1
Round 5: Merfolk
This match was against Vintage world champion and longtime acquaintance Joel Lim. I’d never seen him play Legacy before, and it turned out to be his first Legacy tournament ever. Based on his success with Merfolk in Vintage I put him on the deck for this event as well, it turned out I was right.
Game 1 Joel had Aether Vial on turn 1, Master of the Pearl Trident on turn 2, another Master on turn 3 and Vialed in another one. I accelerated into a turn 3 Zenith for Wren’s Run Packmaster. I passed the turn and prayed to dodge Dismember. He didn’t have the removal spell, I untapped and spent the next 3 turns cranking out wolf tokens until Joel conceded to my monster pack of dogs. I don’t think I could have won this race without Packmaster, the card is a house.
Game 2 Joel had a turn 2 Chalice of the Void on 1. My only mana was a Forest and a Cradle with no creatures in play. I died many turns later with 3x Zenith and 2x Abrupt Decay in my hand without ever drawing a mana source to get things moving.
Game 3 Joel mulliganed to another Chalice hand with no other action. But this time I had mana and Chalice doesn’t do enough on its own. I played through it and won the game pretty comfortably without much resistance.
4-1
Round 6: Deathblade
This matchup is really good. The deck is slow and the mana is awkward and you have all the time in the world to set up your combo.
Game 1 he had an early Jitte backed by double Swords to Plowshares, Liliana of the Veil, and a clutch Wasteland on my much-needed Gaea’s Cradle and managed to sneak a win in a turn ahead of my lethal Natural Order.
Game 2 I cast a turn 3 Packmaster and never played another spell. I pooped out Wolves until he succumbed to the 2/2 army.
Game 3 I had the Abrupt Decay for his early Jitte. He played a Stoneforge Mystic a few turns later with 1 card left in his hand and failed to find on the search, so I put him on Batterskull in hand. I played the next few turns around Batterskull until I was able to draw a Natural Order and Hoof big enough to ignore it. It turned out he didn’t have it, so he must have sideboarded it out and been relying solely on Jitte to get the job done. Batterskull may seem low-impact compared to Jitte, but you’re going to have to win somehow. Giving Elves time is the biggest mistake you can make, you need to start bashing at some point.
5-1
Round 7: Shardless BUG
Now this is an awesome matchup. They give you even more time than Deathblade and have even less removal.
Game 1 I had a really tricky turn 2 win. It required getting a little greedy and putting faith in the deck to get me there on that turn, since if I had missed I’d have been in a little trouble and stunted on resources from bouncing my lands with Rangers. But the deck has a ton of gas from very few permanents if you know how to use every resource and I dug into the Hoof.
Game 2 he curved Grafdigger’s Cage into Baleful Strix into Liliana. On my turn 3 I had to decide to use my Reclamation Sage on his Cage or on his Strix, allowing me to kill Liliana via combat. I decided I cared more about Liliana and smashed the Strix. He started cascading Shardless Agents into Tarmogoyfs and began the beatdown. I used Symbiotes to stem the bleeding and set up a Glimpse turn. The Glimpse drew all 4 Natural Orders, 2 Zeniths, another Glimpse, and a pile of lands so I had to pass the turn. His attack left me dead on board on the following turn, so I used the other Glimpse to dig again. It took careful use of every on board interaction I had but I managed to dig into the Hoof naturally since Natural Order and Zenith were in a cage and cast it for the win.
6-1
Round 8: Steve Rubin with RUG Delver
Steve is my neighbor in real life and my carmate for this event. It sucked having to play against a friend for the win-and-in, but them’s the breaks.
Like I said earlier, this matchup swings wildly based on the skill of both pilots. Rubin is definitely better at Magic than I am and I was his 4th Elves opponent in 8 rounds, so he was warmed up and ready (he hadn’t lost the matchup yet).
I lost the roll and Steve had turn 1 Delver. This is the best card in game 1 and I was under the gun immediately. Turn 2 he flipped his Delver with a Ponder, then Pondered into a second Delver. Facing down 2 flipped Delvers I had to act fast. It was clear from the way he was playing previous turns that he didn’t have a burn spell, so I let him attack me to 1 life and went for a Natural Order that was safe from any of his soft permission. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, he had the hard counter in Force of Will to end the game.
Game 2 was a drawn-out slugfest in which I Abrupt Decayed his early Delver and traded creatures for removal spells until the board was his 4/5 Tarmogoyf vs. my double Deathrite Shaman and Elvish Visionary. I used the Shamans to tread water, gaining 4 life per turn to offset his attacks. My hand during this whole grind was Thoughtseize and Hoof. My plan was to accumulate 9 mana to Seize him and clear the way then shove the Hoof to take it home. One of my lands was Gaea’s Cradle so each turn I drew a 1-drop I cast it to build up mana for the next turn. We reached a point where Rubin had 2 cards in hand. He drew for his turn and played Wasteland, I knew if he hit my Cradle I was in a ton of trouble, but instead he cast a second Goyf with 5 mana available, clearly telegraphing Force of Will. I had one draw step in which if I had hit a land or Natural Order I would have won on the spot, hitting Green Sun’s Zenith would have created a titanic Ooze, and drawing anything else would let him untap and be able to Wasteland me and still keep Force of Will up, completely closing my window to take the game. I drew another random 1-drop and died a few turns later. Dead to a friend for Top 8, but at least it locked him to be able to draw in. Go team!
6-2
Round 9: Miracles
In our pre-match banter my opponent informed me that he hadn’t lost a match yet today. He was in fact 5-0-3, so I put him on Miracles and put him on probably not playing perfectly. The players who really know how to play these slow decks know how to make their decisions quickly and confidently. The players who go to draws round after round are spending a lot of time figuring the deck out rather than playing Magic, so I decided I could afford some liberties against this person that I wouldn’t against a more confident pilot.
In our first game he mulliganed to 5. I had a turn 3 Reclamation Sage for his turn 2 Counterbalance. He shrugged and cast another. I bashed for 2, my Symbiote snuck under the naked Counterbalance and re-deployed the Sage to reclaim that one as well. Without Top in play I could play a lot more aggressively into Terminus that I knew he’d have to cast on his turn and find it naturally in his draw step, so I assembled a ragtag team of little green men to beat down with. On his final turn he was able to cobble together a Plow, Snapcaster, Plow turn that still left him dead for exactsies.
In game 2 I mulliganed to 4. On 4 against my nightmare matchup. My 4 was as good as it gets though. Fetchland, Deathrite, Llanowar, Quirion Ranger. I lead on Llanowar to draw the Plow and he obliged. I played Quirion Ranger and he Force of Willed it. The next turn I played land, Deathrite and it stuck. I got him for 2 life each turn while making land drops and putting a little more pressure on and he made his land drops. I attack with 3 creatures on a later turn and he flashes in Izzet Staticaster. Luckily all of my creatures had different names and I had the Abrupt Decay to clear the road. A few miracle-less draw steps later and he packed it in.
7-2
This tournament was great and my deck felt awesome every single round. My losses were to a nightmare matchup that doesn’t see much play and to a very competent wizard and friend. I beat public enemy number 1 twice on the day, once off a mulligan to 4. Packmaster turned what used to be grindy tough-to-come-back-when-behind midrange matchups into complete jokes. Swan Song gave me the speed bump I needed in matchups that are traditionally a huge problem. And, though making the change was obvious, how much better Reclamation Sage is than Viridian Shaman cannot be understated. It is magnitudes better and not having this card in your main deck is almost certainly a mistake.
I’ll be on Elves with the blue splash and Packmaster in the main for GP New Jersey and Legacy Champs this year. Barring the format breaking in half, I won’t waver from this build. I can’t recommend it enough.
If anyone is interested, here's my Top 8 report from the day 2 Vintage main event: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46643.msg648882#msg648882
This past weekend I took the deck to the Tales of Adventure Comics Eternal Extravaganza. The prizes and promotion for the event were awesome. If you weren’t there I strongly recommend making time for the next one. It’s going to be in about 6 months and the prizes are going to be 40 black border duals.
My local store runs weekly Legacy events as well as one large monthly SCG IQ. With that much legacy in a small and well-defined pool of players I try to switch up my deck choices every week to keep people from metgaming me too hard and to get a feel for the rest of the format. I’ll admit it had been over a month since I brought my little green friends to battle with me. Due to the size and support of this event I decided to dust off my trusty weapon and do my homework to make sure I had the best build I could come up with. I scoured this website’s Decks to Beat: Elves forum, watched videos, and read (in many cases re-read) every article there is to read about Elves. The results of my research were very exciting.
I had been playing the now-standard Green/Black core with a White splash for some sideboard options. The printing of Reclamation Sage made the white splash obsolete. With the ability to destroy enchantments in the main deck, making room in the board for Qasali Pridemage or Harmonic Sliver is wasted space and Gaddock Teeg hasn’t been very good for quite some time now. This change freed me up to try the blue splash for Swan Song that some Elves wizards have been trying lately. I also found a large number of testimonials supporting Wren’s Run Packmaster as a way to break open the grindy midrange matchups, he seemed unreal on paper and I decided to give that a try. Here’s the list:
3 Misty Rainforest
3 Wooded Foothills
2 Windswept Heath
1 Verdant Catacombs
2 Forest
2 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
4 Gaea’s Cradle
2 Dryad Arbor
4 Deathrite Shaman
1 Llanowar Elves
4 Quirion Ranger
4 Nettle Sentinel
3 Heritage Druid
1 Birchlore Ranger
4 Elvish Visionary
4 Wirewood Symbiote
2 Craterhoof Behemoth
1 Reclamation Sage
1 Wren’s Run Packmaster
4 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Glimpse of Nature
3 Natural Order
Sideboard:
1 Null Rod
2 Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Swan Song
3 Abrupt Decay
1 Scavenging Ooze
1 Natural Order
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Progenitus
The official count for the main event was 267 players making for 9 rounds of Legacy action. I felt really good about my deck and was ready to take on the world.
Round 1: High Tide? Omnitell? Dream Halls?
In game 1 my opponent played a Preordain, then a Ponder, then died to my turn 3 Hoof.
Game 2 I kept a hand with Thoughtseize and the potential to have a fast win. He had a turn zero Leyline of Sanctity to block the Thoughtseize. I spent my first few turns deploying Elves to build up my resources, he spent his turns playing Islands and cantripping. On turn 4 I drew and cast Reclamation Sage. My opponent determined this was worth a Force of Will, pitching Intuition. On the following turn I was able to Natural Order unopposed to close the game without ever seeing him play a real spell.
1-0
Round 2: Pox
My opponent won the roll and started on Cursed Scroll. Great, Pox is a nightmare. I had a turn 1 Llanowar, he had a sinkhole, I had a Cradle for Symiote + Visionary, he had to legend rule his Urborg to make 3 mana and Scroll my Wirewood Symbiote. He never drew a 3rd nonlegendary land and his Scroll went from unbeatable to nice to look at. I was able to grind Symbiote plus Visionary into enough gas to close the game.
Game 2 he had Dark Ritual for Inquisition plus Hymn to Tourach followed by Sinkhole on turn 2. I was never in this game.
Game 3 was a longer grind. I had Natural order in hand and passed the turn with 3 lands and Llanowar Elf in play. He cast Engineered Plague on Elf and passed. I drew Dryad Arbor and passed. He Plagued Dryads. I drew Zenith and got Scavenging Ooze. He had the Innocent Blood. I drew Wirewood Symbiote, he Plagued Insects. I drew Deathrite Shaman, he Plauged Elves again. That was enough to close it out. He had 4 plagues and a removal spell on 5 turns running, any of which untapping would have let me run away with the game. But it was not meant to be. This matchup is tough and I put up the best fight I had.
1-1
Round 3: RUG Delver
This matchup is as good as its pilots. Both decks require a lot of decisions on the razor’s edge and a misstep can end the game on either side. All things being equal, this is a largely positive matchup for Elves. My experience usually gives me the edge against the average RUG Delver pilot.
My opponent and I bantered a little before the match then got to business. He made an audible sigh and slumped in his chair when I fetched a basic Forest and played Llanowar Elves. He knows the matchup is bad news. His turn 1 was Ponder, which is always a welcome sight. Delver of Secrets is the only card they have that matters in Game 1. I was able to fighting through his removal and play around his soft counters and eventually bury him with the Visionary/Symbiote alliance.
Game 2 I had the Abrupt Decay for his early Delver to take the pressure off. I kept my board in a place where there was enough pressure that he’d have to react, but Rough/Tumble wouldn’t be better than a 2-for-1. At one point in the match my opponent Fork Bolted my Symbiote and Quirion Ranger. I bounced the ranger to untap a creature and my opponent Stifled the ability. Word to the wise, returning the creature to your hand is part of the cost. There’s no effect in magic that can stop that creature from leaving play once you activate the ability. So my Ranger was safe in hand and the Stifle kept my other creature from untapping. I cobbled together a win a few turns later.
2-1
Round 4: Miracles
My arch nemesis. Make no mistake friends, this matchup is baaaaaddddddddd. Real bad. It gets a little better after board, but it takes a lot of skill and a little luck to maneuver through the wall that is counterbalance and the cleanup crew that is Terminus.
Game 1 Reclamation Sage was in the opener and got to wipe out an early Counterbalance before the engine came online. With Counterbalance out of the way I was able to dance around his one-for-one counterspells long enough to make him dead to Hoof.
Game 2 He Miracled me good and proper. Counterbalance lock backed up by a second balance, multiple Terminus, all backed by one-for-one removal and counters. Swan Song was gas in the game because he had to Force it to make his Terminus resolve which gave me a short window to draw Natural Order and kill him. I didn’t find it until it was too late though and the game was over.
Game 3 was a drawn out affair in which we threw Counterbalances, Abrupt Decays, Terminuses, Swan Songs, Progenitus, and Council’s Judgments at each other until the board was even with both of us low on action with 5 minutes left on the clock. With our diminished time I planned to make sure he couldn’t win before time ran out and to set up my own win on my last turn in extra time. I used my resources in a way that put enough pressure on him that he had to burn off all the cards in his hand to stay alive. On turn 4 of turns he had Counterbalance and Top in play, 2 lands and 1 fetchland open, no cards in hand, and 4 life. I cast the Natural Order I’d been sandbagging and he spun his top. Cracked his fetchland, spun his top again, and conceded to my Hoof.
3-1
Round 5: Merfolk
This match was against Vintage world champion and longtime acquaintance Joel Lim. I’d never seen him play Legacy before, and it turned out to be his first Legacy tournament ever. Based on his success with Merfolk in Vintage I put him on the deck for this event as well, it turned out I was right.
Game 1 Joel had Aether Vial on turn 1, Master of the Pearl Trident on turn 2, another Master on turn 3 and Vialed in another one. I accelerated into a turn 3 Zenith for Wren’s Run Packmaster. I passed the turn and prayed to dodge Dismember. He didn’t have the removal spell, I untapped and spent the next 3 turns cranking out wolf tokens until Joel conceded to my monster pack of dogs. I don’t think I could have won this race without Packmaster, the card is a house.
Game 2 Joel had a turn 2 Chalice of the Void on 1. My only mana was a Forest and a Cradle with no creatures in play. I died many turns later with 3x Zenith and 2x Abrupt Decay in my hand without ever drawing a mana source to get things moving.
Game 3 Joel mulliganed to another Chalice hand with no other action. But this time I had mana and Chalice doesn’t do enough on its own. I played through it and won the game pretty comfortably without much resistance.
4-1
Round 6: Deathblade
This matchup is really good. The deck is slow and the mana is awkward and you have all the time in the world to set up your combo.
Game 1 he had an early Jitte backed by double Swords to Plowshares, Liliana of the Veil, and a clutch Wasteland on my much-needed Gaea’s Cradle and managed to sneak a win in a turn ahead of my lethal Natural Order.
Game 2 I cast a turn 3 Packmaster and never played another spell. I pooped out Wolves until he succumbed to the 2/2 army.
Game 3 I had the Abrupt Decay for his early Jitte. He played a Stoneforge Mystic a few turns later with 1 card left in his hand and failed to find on the search, so I put him on Batterskull in hand. I played the next few turns around Batterskull until I was able to draw a Natural Order and Hoof big enough to ignore it. It turned out he didn’t have it, so he must have sideboarded it out and been relying solely on Jitte to get the job done. Batterskull may seem low-impact compared to Jitte, but you’re going to have to win somehow. Giving Elves time is the biggest mistake you can make, you need to start bashing at some point.
5-1
Round 7: Shardless BUG
Now this is an awesome matchup. They give you even more time than Deathblade and have even less removal.
Game 1 I had a really tricky turn 2 win. It required getting a little greedy and putting faith in the deck to get me there on that turn, since if I had missed I’d have been in a little trouble and stunted on resources from bouncing my lands with Rangers. But the deck has a ton of gas from very few permanents if you know how to use every resource and I dug into the Hoof.
Game 2 he curved Grafdigger’s Cage into Baleful Strix into Liliana. On my turn 3 I had to decide to use my Reclamation Sage on his Cage or on his Strix, allowing me to kill Liliana via combat. I decided I cared more about Liliana and smashed the Strix. He started cascading Shardless Agents into Tarmogoyfs and began the beatdown. I used Symbiotes to stem the bleeding and set up a Glimpse turn. The Glimpse drew all 4 Natural Orders, 2 Zeniths, another Glimpse, and a pile of lands so I had to pass the turn. His attack left me dead on board on the following turn, so I used the other Glimpse to dig again. It took careful use of every on board interaction I had but I managed to dig into the Hoof naturally since Natural Order and Zenith were in a cage and cast it for the win.
6-1
Round 8: Steve Rubin with RUG Delver
Steve is my neighbor in real life and my carmate for this event. It sucked having to play against a friend for the win-and-in, but them’s the breaks.
Like I said earlier, this matchup swings wildly based on the skill of both pilots. Rubin is definitely better at Magic than I am and I was his 4th Elves opponent in 8 rounds, so he was warmed up and ready (he hadn’t lost the matchup yet).
I lost the roll and Steve had turn 1 Delver. This is the best card in game 1 and I was under the gun immediately. Turn 2 he flipped his Delver with a Ponder, then Pondered into a second Delver. Facing down 2 flipped Delvers I had to act fast. It was clear from the way he was playing previous turns that he didn’t have a burn spell, so I let him attack me to 1 life and went for a Natural Order that was safe from any of his soft permission. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, he had the hard counter in Force of Will to end the game.
Game 2 was a drawn-out slugfest in which I Abrupt Decayed his early Delver and traded creatures for removal spells until the board was his 4/5 Tarmogoyf vs. my double Deathrite Shaman and Elvish Visionary. I used the Shamans to tread water, gaining 4 life per turn to offset his attacks. My hand during this whole grind was Thoughtseize and Hoof. My plan was to accumulate 9 mana to Seize him and clear the way then shove the Hoof to take it home. One of my lands was Gaea’s Cradle so each turn I drew a 1-drop I cast it to build up mana for the next turn. We reached a point where Rubin had 2 cards in hand. He drew for his turn and played Wasteland, I knew if he hit my Cradle I was in a ton of trouble, but instead he cast a second Goyf with 5 mana available, clearly telegraphing Force of Will. I had one draw step in which if I had hit a land or Natural Order I would have won on the spot, hitting Green Sun’s Zenith would have created a titanic Ooze, and drawing anything else would let him untap and be able to Wasteland me and still keep Force of Will up, completely closing my window to take the game. I drew another random 1-drop and died a few turns later. Dead to a friend for Top 8, but at least it locked him to be able to draw in. Go team!
6-2
Round 9: Miracles
In our pre-match banter my opponent informed me that he hadn’t lost a match yet today. He was in fact 5-0-3, so I put him on Miracles and put him on probably not playing perfectly. The players who really know how to play these slow decks know how to make their decisions quickly and confidently. The players who go to draws round after round are spending a lot of time figuring the deck out rather than playing Magic, so I decided I could afford some liberties against this person that I wouldn’t against a more confident pilot.
In our first game he mulliganed to 5. I had a turn 3 Reclamation Sage for his turn 2 Counterbalance. He shrugged and cast another. I bashed for 2, my Symbiote snuck under the naked Counterbalance and re-deployed the Sage to reclaim that one as well. Without Top in play I could play a lot more aggressively into Terminus that I knew he’d have to cast on his turn and find it naturally in his draw step, so I assembled a ragtag team of little green men to beat down with. On his final turn he was able to cobble together a Plow, Snapcaster, Plow turn that still left him dead for exactsies.
In game 2 I mulliganed to 4. On 4 against my nightmare matchup. My 4 was as good as it gets though. Fetchland, Deathrite, Llanowar, Quirion Ranger. I lead on Llanowar to draw the Plow and he obliged. I played Quirion Ranger and he Force of Willed it. The next turn I played land, Deathrite and it stuck. I got him for 2 life each turn while making land drops and putting a little more pressure on and he made his land drops. I attack with 3 creatures on a later turn and he flashes in Izzet Staticaster. Luckily all of my creatures had different names and I had the Abrupt Decay to clear the road. A few miracle-less draw steps later and he packed it in.
7-2
This tournament was great and my deck felt awesome every single round. My losses were to a nightmare matchup that doesn’t see much play and to a very competent wizard and friend. I beat public enemy number 1 twice on the day, once off a mulligan to 4. Packmaster turned what used to be grindy tough-to-come-back-when-behind midrange matchups into complete jokes. Swan Song gave me the speed bump I needed in matchups that are traditionally a huge problem. And, though making the change was obvious, how much better Reclamation Sage is than Viridian Shaman cannot be understated. It is magnitudes better and not having this card in your main deck is almost certainly a mistake.
I’ll be on Elves with the blue splash and Packmaster in the main for GP New Jersey and Legacy Champs this year. Barring the format breaking in half, I won’t waver from this build. I can’t recommend it enough.
If anyone is interested, here's my Top 8 report from the day 2 Vintage main event: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=46643.msg648882#msg648882