Tuesday 15 March 2016

I See Red

Today I will be going through my preparation and how I selected the deck I played at GP Melbourne 2016. In the coming days I will also be releasing a round by round analysis so to be sure to check in for  check that out.

My highest calibre results have always been with Workshop  Control decks but looking at recent results I saw that the best performing Workshop lists had all been Aggro varients. I have never been comfortable with these aggro lists and I was not as confidant in building a Workshop Control deck as I had been prior to my GP winning performance in Sydney last year. Without good local data nor the confidence to build a good Prison deck I had to look at my other options. I was unable to pick dredge due to lack of cards so failing all else I started looking at blue decks.

Thinking about the expected field two things stood out to me.
          1) With the upsurge in Workshop Aggro (Trike/Ravager etc) and Mentor decks I expected there to be very few Null Rods in the field.
          2)      With Storm being held up as one of the better decks I wanted to play a list with Duress effects.

Duress for those who don’t know, is one of my favourite cards in all of Magic. The information, the disruption, and the ability to walk your opponent into traps  make resolving the card just so satisfying.

With these in mind I was looking at various decks which could abuse both of these points. This led me building two decks: Jaime Cano’s top 8 Burning Gifts list from MKM Series Madrid (with some additional hand disruption) and an old version of Angel City Vault as popularised by Brian DeMars.

A few sample hands from both lists made me realise that the changes I had made to Jaime’s list changed how it would play out its draws and caused a small amount of internal tension which made me uncomfortable. I turned to focus on the Vault deck and my good friend Graham King agreed to come over to test it with me. A few games into the testing session and I had realised that the deck was just too inconsistent for my liking. I either won on turn one against his Oath deck or it went Magicarp and could only Splash before it died. Having gone down two dead ends I went looking and found Andy Probasco’s list from the Power 9 Challenge.

Not only was it a painter list, similar to the one I had done well the month before, but it also now had the addition of Duress (with baby Jace recursion). Further testing with Graham showed that the deck was really weak to Abrupt Decay. The Nihil Spellbomb in the main had done very little in testing so I was very comfortable making the switch to a Misdirection. Melbourne’ Vintage scene had me worried about a large Workshop presence so I also switch over the Duress’ main deck into Thoughtseize. The final list I registered was:

4 Scalding Tarn

1 Polluted Delta
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Island
3 Volcanic island
2 Underground Sea
1 Tolarian Academy
1 Strip Mine

1 Black Lotus
1 Mana Crypt
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Sapphire
2 Grindstone

3 Painters Servant
1 Blightsteel Colossus
2 Jace, Vryn’s Prodigy

1 Dack Fayden

4 Force of Will
4 Pyroblast
3 Mental Misstep
3 Thirst for Knowledge
2 Gush
1 Misdirection
1 Dig Through Time
1 Brainstorm
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Thoughtseize
1 Yawgmoth’s Will
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Treasure Cruise
1 Time Walk
1 Tinker

Sideboard:
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Duress
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Shattering Spree
3 Ingot Chewer
1 Mountain
2 Grafdigger’s Cage
4 Leyline of the Void



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