Last Words

Last Words

First – The introduction

Welcome to my ever-first Blog, called „Last Words“. The expression „Last Words“ belongs to a specific topic, which i will explain later in this article.

I am playing Magic since the Innistrad / Return to Ravnica – Standard in 2013. Starting with Standard, i quickly realized that this Format is too fast-paced with it’s heavy rotation-alike behaviour. Quickly i switched Formats and gain momentum playing Modern.

When i started i had like literally a hundred bucks. I was playing Goblins, a deck i highly anticipated because it was playing Lightning Bolt. It was so much fun to me Bolting and Grenading player’s to death that i’ve sticked to Bolt-Decks for the first 2 years of playing the Format.

I’ve switched to Wild Nacatl and Kird Ape, began burning and trampling people to 0 Lifepoints quickly – thanks Ghor-clan Rampager for all that you’ve made possible :D When Eidolon of the Great Revel picked up steam i finally switched to real Burn. After 2 years (2015) it began to become stale and i was struggling to find a new archetype fitting my playstyle.

Heading ahead

I’ve landed on Living End – Combo, a super-fun and easy to pilot Combo-Deck. Fulminator Mage became my new best friend. The thing that impressed me the most about this deck was it’s ability to drew from a literally „Do-nothing-hand “ into victory. I can’t count how many times i’ve started with a Zero-Lander and cycled through my deck putting together Lands (thanks Pale Recluse) and Combo-Pieces or just Mana-Screwing Dudes.

This deck was the first one that puts me in the spot of interacting with my opponent. Eyebrows may rise here, but i was interested in putting as much interaction into the game that this decks allowed to. I soon realized that the deck wasn’t so much interested in interacting with my opponent – my best chances to win have been against decks that couldn’t keep up with my Combo and Fulminator / Beast Within.

After 9 months the deck started to gain stale (again). So i was lurking into other decks. Because i was still „On a budget“ the choices were limited. 

A shiny day i was heading for a small local Comic-Store and found 2 Modern Event Decks (BW Tokens) for a good price (at this time in 2016 Inquisition of Kozilek was a $30 Card, so the 2 Decks has been insanely valueable). I’ve said to myself „Ok, this won’t become a Tier 1 Deck, but investing into a bunch of Modern-Staples attached to a complete deck can’t be totally wrong“.

I’ve bought both Packs, traded up some important upgrades (Thoughtseize) and started playing and enjoying the deck. Lingering Souls became my new favorite. I loved it. Putting a lot of 1/1’s onto the field felt great. 

Thoughtseize was a real obsession to me because i was always figuring out how to do it the right way. Not to early, not to late, picking the right cards became my private go-to challenge.

Soon the players in my Local Meta started to adapt to my deck, packing more sweepers and Izzet Staticcaster. I realized i had to adapt. Thoughtseize was my addiction, so i wasn’t able to drop that card, looking for a cheap Midrange-Deck.

Jund and Junk Midrange were horrendous expensive, Mardu was out-of-sight plain bad. So i was searching the internet for hot new teck as i couldn’t believe that there are just 2 playable Lingering Souls Decks.

Teh miracle

What was becoming my miracle was BW Eldrazi Processor, a deck that most recognized as being completely dead after the Eye of Ugin Ban. 

I quickly recognized that this deck has all the tools to compete with the Haymakers of the Format at this time – Infect, Affinity, Burn, Jund Midrange, Dredge, Grixis Control. It had superior removal (Path, Anguished Unmaking, Wasteland Strangler), Big Creatures (Thought-Knot Seer, Reality Smasher) and a whole bunch of disruption (Relic of Progenitus, Thoughtseize, Collective Brutality, TKS).

The combination of disruptive elements paired with Big Creatures fascinated me and i’ve put a lot of work in teching and tweaking the deck to my local meta. The end result was, that i’ve won plenty of smaller events (FNM’s and alike) and was able to place into the price ranks at our 40 – 80 people events. I’ve figured out ways to beat the bad matchups (Tron, TitanShift), putting my win-loss-rate against this horrendous matchups to a 50 / 50 chance.

The single best thing has been that i was able to put myself ahead in games just becausing knowing what openers to keep and perfect metagaming. Then something happened that sadly happened way too often – there were bannings. Infect and Dredge were literally banned to death (Dredge came back soon after), but 2 of my best Matchups has been gone and even worse Titanshift, EldraziTron and Storm became all the rage.

I’ll alway remember those Games with a Turn 1 Glisterner Elf and i had my inner smile. This Matchup was the most skill-testing for me because i knew i had to keep the RIGHT opener and had to play super-exactly to pull a win through. I was never sad to lose to a topdecked Become immense because i know this deck was intended to do exactly this at it’s finest (that’s why i call Modern the „Format of Topdecks“ – many decks win because of ripping there outs from the top of there decks).

I always loved playing against aggressive decks because they can close the game very quickly and force myself to play tightly. On the other side I hated these Cryptic Command – Decks - it was the epitome of durdling for me (there weren’t able to close out the game before Turn 10 (Twin was the exception to the rule)).

Future Sight

Right now i sold the deck - i was tired  of playing Lingering Souls and Thoughtseize all day long. 

I’ve piloted the deck a couple of months more after the Gitaxian Probe / Golgari-Grave Troll Ban, but to be honest Eldrazi Tron and Titanshift are horrendous Matchups and were dampering the fun-factor of the game enormous.

I was struggling again to find a new shell to put some work into. For now i’m playing a super-sweet Vengevine-Aggro Brew that reminds me on my old days slinging Bolts and Burning-Tree Emissary into Flinthoof Boar. This deck will be introduced to you my dear readers on one of the next Blogs because of one single reason: Every Brew (no matter if good or bad) gives something to the uninitiated. If it’s reading Mana, playing to your outs, changing the Control / agro route dynamically etc. there’s always something to learn, which became the most important aspect to play Magic for me.

The next “Big thing” will become Bant Knightfall. I was intrueged by playing an aggressive deck with disruptive elements (oh my dear Spell Queller) plus a comboesque finisher in Knight of the Reliquary and Retreat to Coralhelm. 

I believe that the best route to victory in this format is to choose a deck with some form of (light) disruption, a good plan A and a Backup Plan B. Add a bit of removal and a good amount of Metagame-Knowledge and someone has always the chance of placing in the top rankings. 

Last Words

This is the third time writing “Last Words” – The Blog, the headline of this entry and the sub-headline are “Last Words”. So let my explain (shortly) what’s up with this “Last Words”.

I’ll put this headline on the bottom of each Blog-entry. It’s a short summary of all that has been written above. This is for the readers that read the entry once and come back later (day’s, weeks, even month’s) to shortcut the whole article. 

There’s just so much information on this game and Format that I don’t want to delay your intentions of becoming a better player or enjoying other stuff.

So this chapter will always be intended to summarize the whole article and just put it back to your mind at will – nothing else. For now I’ll leave it that way because it’s literally not possible to summarize my history in 2 sentences, so I do not try to.

Stay ready for my upcoming articles about Vengevine-Aggro, Bant Knightfall and BW Eldrazi-Processor.