After being run over by college applications, I decided to finally write up the second installment of the interview series I started prior to the Source’s Fifth Year Anniversary Tournament. When the dust settled from that event, a new competitor had emerged onto the legacy scene, Team America. The deck’s success was not a one hit wonder either, Team America has gone on to top eight at a plethora of events across the world and even saw the honor of being played by Team Australia in the Legacy section of the team event at Worlds. Due to the deck’s continued success, I decided that Dan Signorini (nitewolf9 around the source), the mastermind behind Team America would be a great subject for the next installment. Dan surely did not disappoint.

 Before we begin, here is the profile for Team America:
Team America- Circa Fifth Anniversary Tournament

 4 Tombstalker
4 Tarmogoyf

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Stifle
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Thoughtseize
4 Snuff Out
4 Sinkhole

4 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou

Sideboard:
4 Tormod's Crypt
4 Blue Elemental Blast
4 Krosan Grip
3 Diabolic Edict

List of finishes
 http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=20393
Official Team America Thread
 http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11605
Unlocking Legacy, Focusing on Dan’s T8 Finish with Team America
 http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/l...y_by_Play.html


How are you Dan? Before we begin, could you introduce yourself to everyone who might not be familiar with yourself and/or Team America?
I’m doing just fine, thank you. First of all, my name is Dan Signorini and I am 26 years old. I live in Northern VA and am an avid Legacy enthusiast. I have had a hand in developing a few decks, namely Eva Green, It’s the Fear, and now Team America (all collaborations). Since I am no fan of “tooting my own horn”, I think the following testimonials will bring my character out into the forefront more effectively and with less bias than my self-gratifying banter:

“This kid is the real deal, folks. A triple threat: the brains of a triple Ph.D., the build of an Olympian champion, all topped off with an exceptionally manly swagger.” - Alix Hatfield

“He’s so dreamy…” - David Price

“…Dan who? Oh right, the other guy that actually played red death!” – Anwar Ahmad

“Why isn’t this article about me? For fuck’s sake, god damn you all.” – David Gearhart

“A fantastic American debut…potent as a shot of vodka.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review)

As for Team America, for those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a blue/black/green aggro-control deck designed around the concept of generating a large amount of tempo in the early game through cheap and/or free disruption spells, followed by a large creature in the form of Tarmogoyf or Tombstalker to finish a struggling opponent. The deck’s disruption primarily aims to attack an opponent’s mana in a highly focused assault involving the trinity of Sinkhole, Stifle, and Wasteland. It has been highly successful in its relatively short amount of time on the Legacy scene, and was a joint effort between myself and the legendary Legacy deck designer David Gearhart. As an aside, he is probably going to high-five me for that sentence… multiple times. Seriously, it just doesn’t stop.

How did the deck come about? Take us through the R&D process for Team America?
Okay, for starters, this deck in its original form was by no means intended to be competitive at all. David Gearhart decided that he was going to build a deck using cards that generally don’t see play in America, but are consistently represented in top 8’s in European Legacy tournaments. The deck had Tombstalker (a great start…), Dark Confidant (yes, four…with four Tombstalkers…take that, sound deck designing theory!), Force of Will, Daze, Thoughtseize, Sinkhole, four main deck Extirpates (yes, David Gearhart at one time actually played these in the main deck), Stifle, Wasteland, and no removal whatsoever. While somewhat fun to play, the deck had problems when your opponent actually managed to do something that included resolving a threat. For some strange reason I decided to play this abomination off and on, as apparently I had temporary brain damage. Also, it is kind of fun to Extirpate duals. Until your opponent plays something like City of Brass… listen, that’s irrelevant, the deck was kind of fun to play. But Dark Confidant and Tombstalker really don’t play well together, especially without Sensei’s Divining Top (no matter what that guy who top 8’d a standard tournament with bob + four Greater Gargadons has to say). So, I decided to cut bob for Phyrexian Dreadnought, when the errata happened, and to cut Extirpate for Snuff Out. While Snuff Out was incredible, as I thought it would be because of how ridiculous it is in Eva Green, Dreadnought remained a huge liability. The problem was something that two for one’s you when removed (while being very easy to remove), was not good for a deck with no way to recoup the cards invested, 12/12 or not. David eventually added green to the deck, because "Tarmogoyf is too good not to run in a deck like this”, and put Quirion Dryad in the spot that Ponder now occupies. He thought that the deck needed more than just eight threats, and although I knew of the Canadian Ugr threshold lists that were doing just fine with 8 creatures, I also thought the deck might be too threat light. The consensus was that Dryad sucked, and at one point we tried Street Wraith in that spot. That was also not really what the deck was looking for, so we finally settled on Ponder. Looking back now, I can’t imagine the deck without the eight cantrips, which also makes the blue count for Force a more comfortable twenty as opposed to the original sixteen.

Once we had optimized the main deck and had an idea of what gave the deck issues, we settled on a list for the 5 year anniversary Source tournament that included a sideboard of four Krosan Grip, four Tormod’s Crypt, four Blue Elemental Blast, and three Diabolic Edict. David decided to give his most recent build of It’s the Fear a shot, while I decided to pilot Team America. Eric Gosse also decided to pilot the deck for that tournament. Although he did not make top 8 that day, he has been doing consistently well with it since.

Around when did you realize “Oh hey, this can actually be competitive,”?

I’m not sure if there really was any “Eureka” moment that switched the perception of the deck from being a pet project to a serious choice for a major tournament. It was a very gradual change, with many small steps. There was a lot of grunt work that went into developing Team America that included a lot of hours of testing. However, I do think that adding green to the deck was one of the major stepping stones.

Could you take us through your current list, and explain the card choices?
Certainly. As I have already gone through a lot in the R&D question, let me try to make this as brief as possible.

“Team America”:

4 Tombstalker
4 Tarmogoyf

4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder

4 Thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
4 Daze
4 Stifle
4 Sinkhole
4 Snuff Out

4 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Underground Sea
2 Tropical Island
1 Bayou

Sideboard:
4 Tormod’s Crypt
3 Krosan Grip
3 Hydroblast
3 Diabolic Edict
2 Reanimate

To understand our choice, you have to think of this deck more along the lines of Suicide Black as opposed to Threshold. The eight cantrips are there to add consistency, dig for the relatively low number of threats in the main deck, and add to the blue count for Force of Will. Tombstalker and Tarmogoyf are the two best pound-for-pound threats in the Legacy format, hands down. Force of Will, Daze, and Snuff Out are all “free” spells that allow this deck to generate a lot of early tempo, while Thoughtseize is probably the best disruption spell available in black. It helps you answer pretty much anything that will stop your threats from "getting there", so to speak. The disruption package is completed with Stifle, Wasteland, and Sinkhole, allowing you to wreck your opponent’s manabase and keep Daze relevant well into the game. I have said this many times before, but I will say it here again: these three elements form a complete mana denial package. If your opponent sits on fetchlands, they will be more vulnerable to Stifle. If they fetch basics, Sinkhole will punish them by cutting off a color. If they fetch nonbasics, Wasteland will be very effective. Couple this with the hand-sculpting ability of Brainstorm and Ponder and it just seems like you always have the right kind of disruption at the right time.

The manabase is designed to achieve double black as early as possible, while also having access to all three colors in the deck. The Bayou really helps you here as with a single Underground Sea and a single Bayou, you can cast anything in the deck. You only run one because you really don’t want to see opening hands with cantrips that include bayou as the only colored source. The numbers of Bloodstained Mires and Flooded Strands can vary, but I personally feel that the configuration above is ideal.

As for the sideboard, Blue Blasts are there as a versatile way to deal with Moon effects, really aggressive red decks, and Goblins. Tormod’s Crypt helps the abysmal pre-board ichorid matchup, while Krosan Grip is there to deal with things like Top and Counterbalance, and more recently Phyrexian Dreadnought. Diabolic Edict has proven to be a bomb in aggro-control mirrors, as well as a way to eliminate black creatures, while Reanimate (a recent addition), is an extremely versatile way to increase threat density and boost aggro matchups.

That is a really tight mainboard configuration. Is there anything that you’d want to add in if you could find the space for it?
I don’t think there is anything I would want to change in the maindeck. Two things that have been impressing me more and more with Team America are its incredible consistency and its focused game plan. If you are going to play a deck like this, you need to get used to the idea of four-of’s. That’s what works in Suicide, and that’s what works here. Because of this an interesting gripe has surfaced from many in the online community that the deck seems to be “unoriginal”, or a “bunch of good cards slapped into one pile”. After reading this interview and understanding the methodology behind the card choices I hope we will be vindicated in our card selections, as this deck plays quite unlike anything else out there.

How synergistic do you think the maindeck is? It definitely looks like everything plays together really well.
There is a lot of synergy in Team America. The ability to play twelve spells that don’t cost any mana, in a deck that aims to play as much disruption in the early game as it can, is invaluable. One of my issues with the Ugr “Canadian” Threshold lists is that Stifle and Wasteland on their own don’t seem to put enough pressure on an opponent’s manabase. I believe the burn that they run helps to mitigate this by providing reach after the initial onslaught, but with Sinkhole you can keep the pressure going much more effectively. This point was illustrated above, but I can’t stress it enough. Sinkhole really is phenomenal in a strategy like this. Tombstalker is an amazing threat and very easy to cast as you’re putting a lot of cards into your graveyard early. The name of the game here is tempo, and this deck simply uses the best tools at its disposal to generate massive amounts of it.

What are the most common lines of play with the deck?
The beauty of playing this thing is that the overall game plan is so simple; disrupt your opponent, drop a threat, and keep on disrupting while you smash them with said threat. Ideally a turn one Thoughtseize is what you want to see in pretty much any matchup, but the deck does provide plenty of things to do from turn one out. Stifle, Ponder, Brainstorm… your hand and what your opponent does will dictate how you utilize these cards. Generally speaking, you want to try to start blowing up lands from the very beginning, while using Snuff Out and counter magic to control threats that try to slip through. For example, a strong sequence of plays against most decks would be something along the lines of: turn one Thoughtseize, turn two Sinkhole, turn three Wasteland followed by Tarmogoyf, with a Snuff Out or Force of Will being cast at some point in there. You can replace the Thoughtseize with Ponder to find that turn two Sinkhole, or maybe leaving a land open for Stifle. As a rule of thumb, you want to disrupt as much as you can as early as possible, and adapt your later plays to what your opponent manages to get through your disruption.
You always want to play Thoughtseize first against an unknown (and in fact, almost every) opponent.

Is the sideboard pretty static, or does it undergo major changes depending on the metagame?
I think the sideboard is pretty much optimized at this point, but you obviously want to be adaptable if you are expecting a disproportionate percentage of a single archetype. The current board covers a lot of bases.

Much like when I interviewed David for It’s The Fear, Team America also has a lot of random card suggestions from people across the internet. What are some frequently mentioned cards that should be nowhere near the list?
Here is a short list of those cards along with a brief explanation:

Extirpate – It was in the original version of this deck and it sucked. In the board, it doesn’t help you nearly as much as Crypt does against Ichorid, and really isn’t worth the space against anything else.

Basic lands – A lot of people worry about Moon effects and Wasteland “wrecking” their manabase and thus run basic lands, but I feel that you pay a price in consistency by adding them. Team America is very color intensive and needs to have double black early, while also having access to blue from turn 1 and green from potentially turn 2. I feel that you will lose more games to not having access to the colors you need with basics than you will by your opponent dropping an early moon effect on you or Wasting one of your dual lands.

Other threats – such as Sea Drake, might be nice to have in the deck, but there really isn’t anything that would be better as a creature not named “Tarmogoyf” or “Tombstalker” (and even if we could run more of these, it would be very hard to make room).

Dark Confidant – This deck is all about tempo, and Dark Confidant is all about drawing extra cards later on and not being able to fight. Aside from Tombstalker hurting you a lot if flipped, and the already immense strain on the life total from cards like Snuff Out and Thoughtseize, Dark Confidant will eat up tempo to put more cards in your hand. This has been discussed time and time again in the context of Suicide Black, and the same argument applies here. While a great card in some strategies, Dark Confidant does not belong in a deck that wants to dominate the early game and win by generating a tempo advantage.

Spell Snare – The only slot this card could occupy would be the one that Sinkhole currently holds, and we feel that Sinkhole is too important in the deck to cut for a conditional counterspell. We tested Spell Snare in many different configurations, and it always seemed to be a weak link. I know a lot of people love this card, but this is just experience talking; in the context of Team America it is sub-optimal.

What is a favorable meta for Team America? What do you love sitting down against?
This is an interesting question because a lot of people seem to feel that Team America is a “metagame” deck. I’m not really quite sure what this is supposed to mean, but if your deck plays lands and spells, Team America can disrupt it. Highly proactive, disruptive strategies will usually make your opponent worry about you, and not the other way around. As for specific matchups, I think the favorable list includes, but is not limited to:

multi-color control decks like Landstill and It’s the Fear
Goblins
most Survival builds
Storm combo

I also really enjoy playing the Threshold matchup. It is not quite a favorable one, but is usually very close (most of the time it’s going to be around 50/50 in the context of lists running Counterbalance, probably favorable for those that aren’t). The sideboard is also well equipped to deal with aggro-control strategies, providing cards like Krosan Grip and Diabolic Edict. Edict has been especially nasty in these matchups and a sleeper hit since the Source anniversary tournament.

Conversely, what makes you curse your pairings?
I will never want to see an Ichorid player sitting across from me while piloting Team America, even though my track record against them has been pretty good. Additionally, Dragon Stompy is probably as close to a nightmare matchup as you can get.

Goyf sligh and Zoo decks playing tons of removal are also going to be anywhere from slightly to annoyingly unfavorable matchups.

While it is untested so far, I also think a mono colored control deck with tons of removal, like The Mighty Quinn, will probably give Team America headaches.

This being said, one of the deck’s strengths is its ability to fight through almost anything. The sideboard really helps where you need it and the deck’s consistency alone can pull out some unexpected victories.