Mono Red Update

Hey guys, it's GuitarSlam.

I got in a decent amount of testing today on mtgo after I got out of work.  Here's the main point that I found:

This deck cannot beat Thragtusk or Scavenging Ooze.

"Well, duh, that's obvious," you may say, and you would be right.  Clearly a 5/3 that gains 5 life when it enters the battlefield and leaves behind a blocker when it gets Searing Speared is pretty good against a mono red deck.  To go along with it, a 2/2 that grows quickly and gains life while doing it is a pretty good compliment.  The issue isn't that these cards are good against the deck (all decks have cards good against them) but the problem is that these cards are played in *so* many of the competitive decks that you may run up against.  Let me list some:

1. Jund
2. Junk
3. GW Tokens or Lifegain
4. RG Midrange
5. BG Control

"Swag is bringing life to the party and making sure a
homie isn't alone when leaving." - Swagtusk

That's only what I could think of immediately off the top of my head.  I'm sure that there are more decks that use these two cards together.  My point of all of this is that it's really hard to win consistently.  That doesn't take away from the raw power the mono red deck, however.  It's still an explosive deck that can dump all of the cards in its hand in an effort to destroy the opponent by turn 5.  The problem is that the natural foil to aggro decks is lifegain and this Standard format has plenty of that.

I do run Skullcracks in the board and they come in for a lot of matchups, but you don't always draw them.  When you have a Skullcrack in hand and your opponent plays a Thragrusk, it's a pretty good feeling for you.  You just got an 8 point life swing in your favor (the -3 of Skullcrack and the fact that your opponent lost out on gaining 5) and that is usually enough to finish the game off if you've put out any decent amount of pressure on the board.  Despite this, there's not much that can be done.

That's the real crux of the problem at hand.  There really isn't a great answer to these two cards (plus Huntmaster as an honorable mention).  There's not many ways to increase your own speed any more (this deck is already focused on hyper-aggression) and without disruption, there's no way to stop what's happening around you.  Sure, you can Searing Spear a Scavenging Ooze, but that's if they play it without having extra mana to remove creatures, which a smart player won't do.

Now, like I said before, don't let this skew your opinion about this deck.  It's still really good and especially powerful for the price tag (approximately $21).  If you're looking for a cheap deck to get started with (like I was) this is still a great decision.  For such a small price, it has extraordinary power that can steal games out of nowhere.  I'm going to keep testing this deck and see what I come up with.  If you guys can think of anything to help, please comment :)

See you guys later.

Red Deck Wins on MTGO is Destroying :D

This card is amazing!!

Hey guys, it's GuitarSlam.

First off, sorry for not posting recently.  I went away for a mini vacation last week (meaning that I didn't play any mtg) and then I've been working non-stop this week (because it's the last week before my fall semester starts) so overall, I haven't had much time for magic.  Luckily for me, and for my avid readers, tonight I was able to find some time to spend playing on mtgo :)  I've been doing some drafts recently, but I really wanted to play Standard, but I didn't have a deck and didn't want to invest a huge amount of money into a deck, so I began looking for alternatives.  My White Weenie deck was certainly an option, but I felt like going for a more aggressive route... a more... red one.

That's what got me, the most control-loving player in the world, looking up mono red decks.  I knew that the deck was going to be cheap and fairly simple to run (although there's definitely some skill in learning when it's the right time to attack and when you should stay back and block) so I began my search.  After a little bit of looking, I stumbled upon Patrick Sullivan's mono red deck from a StarCity Event last month.  Check out the deck tech here:  Patrick Sullivan's Mono Red Deck.

I decided to make a few changes to make it cost even less.  I cut the Mutavaults not because they're bad, but because they're expensive.  When you get Wrathed, it's nice to have a creature waiting to attack again, but it's far beyond what I wanted to pay.  I also added in some extra burn, as you'll see.  The final major change was replacing Hellrider with Ogre Battledriver.  Hellrider is probably better, but the Battledriver is still powerful and much cheaper.  Here's my list, clocking in at 20.7 mtgo tickets.

Creatures: 28

4 Stromkirk Noble
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Foundry Street Denizen
4 Firefist Striker
4 Burning-Tree Emissary
4 Mogg Flunkies
4 Ogre Battledriver

Other Spells: 10

4 Pillar of Flame
4 Searing Spear
2 Brimstone Volley

Lands: 22

22 Mountain

Sideboard: 15

4 Burning Earth
4 Volcanic Strength
4 Skullcrack
3 Mark of Mutiny

As you can see, this is just straight up Mono Red.  The point is to play a lot of creatures and bash face, adding in burn to finish off the game or clear up the path for your creatures.  There's really not too much to explain past that.  I went 4-1 in the casual room (with my 1 loss being due to a gigantic misplay) so instead of taking about those (because they were against random decks) I'll go over my first venture into the 2-man queues.

Mono Red vs. Bant Control

Game 1: I won the roll and was on the play.  I played a t1 Foundry Street Denizen and he shocked himself to play a Temple Garden and an Avacyn's Pilgrim.  On t2 I played Burning-Tree into Burning-Tree into Firefist Striker.  I swung with my 4-1 and he blocked.  I liked that trade.  He was at 18, lost his mana accelerator, and I had 6 power on board.  He played a Voice of Resurgence.  I then attacked with my whole team, making his Voice unable to block.  I then played a Mogg Flunkies and passed.  He untapped and played a Loxodon Smiter.  On my turn I Pillar of Flamed his Voice, swung in, and ended.  He drew his card and then conceded the game.

Game 2: I opened with a slower hand on the draw, but I was holding a Burning Earth (which I had sided in) and 4 lands.  I kept.  Throughout the game I played some creatures and he would play his own Loxodon Smiters and Restoration Angels, but I was just waiting for him to tap out so I could safely resolve Burning Earth.  He finally did, and that card absolutely won me the game.  The next turn he cast a Thragtusk but he ended up losing 5 life to do it, so Burning Earth completely erased the life gain.  He was at 7 and he knew that he couldn't really tap his mana effectively at this point.  He decided to risk playing a Supreme Verdict to wipe the board, dropping down to 3 life to do so.  I untapped, played Searing Spear, and won my booster pack.

*Note: I want to take a second to give a big shoutout to my friend tton for telling me how great Burning Earth was back when it was spoiled.  I thought it was going to be ok, maybe a 5/10, but I felt like it was too slow for an aggro deck to play.  I guess that shows how little I know about playing aggro.  He told me that this card was going to be a 10/10, slam dunk great card for aggro decks and from my testing so far, he's absolutely right!

What I'm taking away from this is that this super budget Mono Red deck is capable to competing with the other full power decks of the format.  Obviously I need to do more testing, but for now I'm feeling incredible about this deck.  For roughly $21, it seems like you can buy a competitive deck on mtgo and get in there with the big guns.  I'll keep posting updates as I play more with the deck.  Give it a try!  I'd love to hear what you think of it!

See you guys later.

Deck Brewings and MTGO Talk

Possible Humans update?  Or is Necromancer the way to go?  Or both?

Hey guys, it's GuitarSlam.

Sorry for not posting last week... lots of work recently and not a whole lot of Magic.  Despite that, I've still managed to do plenty of mental brewing about what changes to make to my White Weenie deck and I've also began venturing into Magic: The Gathering Online (or MTGO).

For the White Weenie deck, I've thought about three different options to change it.  My original thought, as eluded to in my last article, was a BW Humans deck with Xathrid Necromancer.  I don't like the original lists of this type of deck that ran a lot of tokens with Gather the Townsfolk as a primary card.  I understand the purpose of pumping out plenty of humans and adding in sac outlets to turn them into zombies, but if you didn't have the Necromancer out the deck functioned as a really poor tokens strategy, which is a really inconsistent way to win, in my opinion.  Instead, I thought about taking Xathrid Necromancer and splashing some B cards around him (like maybe Doom Blade or Profit // Loss) to just add more resiliency to the already fast aggro deck that I was running.

The next version of this deck that I was thinking of was the Craig Wescoe Boros build that he ran at worlds.  I was actually toying around with this concept in my head before I saw his list but I really started to consider the power of the deck when I saw what he was running.  He wrote an article about the deck here and explains it far better than I can.  You guys should definitely check out his article.

The final idea is just simply combining the two and creating a WBR version.  I don't actually like this concept as much because the lands are much more expensive and it starts to take away from the original concept of the deck.  I wanted a consistent and simple deck that had a lot of redundancy with the creatures and I feel like this version stretches the core of the deck a little too thin.  I haven't tested it much so maybe I'm wrong, but for now I would rather stick with either BW or WR.

Switching gears, I wanted to talk about my journey into MTGO.  I really dislike the idea of paying so much money to play on the computer (especially when I don't plan on giving up paper magic) but I'm trying to find ways around this.  Currently I do Phantom Drafts and New Player Phantom Drafts.  A Phantom Draft is where you pay 4 event tickets to enter (approximately 4 dollars) and you do a regular draft or sealed event. You can win packs at the end depending on your record, just like in any regular event.  The kicker is that in this type of draft you don't get to keep the cards that you pull in your packs, which is the main draw to playing drafts in the first place.  The reason that I'm playing these Phantom Drafts is that they're $10 less than a regular draft so if I bomb out of one or two drafts, it's not that bad.  I'm currently around 4-8 in matches (because I'm bad at drafts... I'm trying to learn) but I did manage to 2-0 my last New Player Draft (there are only 2 rounds) so I'm feeling pretty happy about that.  I really enjoy drafting and I'm looking to get better at it, hopefully so that I can begin winning real amounts of packs in the non-Phantom draft versions :P

Well, that's all I've got for today.  I'm going to do some playtesting tonight with my friends so I'll give an update about my Humans deck soon.  If you guys want to test out these decks, make sure that you tell me about your thoughts on them!  I would love to get your input :D

See you guys later.

Tournament Report - TCGPlayer VIP Qualifier - 8/3/13

Hey guys, it's GuitarSlam.

Here's the post that all of my White Weenie talk has come to... the actual tournament report!  It definitely wasn't a big tournament (only around 50 people entered) but it was still a lot of fun for me.  Only one other time have I played in a tournament as large as this (my FNMs average between 15-25 people) so I was very excited to get things under way.  I went with two of my friends; one who was playing UWR Control and the other was playing his homebrew of Biovisionary for fun.  So without further ado, here are the matches!

Match 1: White Weenie vs. GB Starter Deck

Ya, it was kind of disappointing to start off the day playing someone who was using a starter deck... he was obviously a new player and he didn't quite understand all of the concepts of the game, but he was a nice guy and I'm glad to see that he's eager to get into the game.  I won both games quickly. 1-0

Match 2: White Weenie vs. 4 Color Midrange (Jedi Jund)

My opponent was a really nice guy.  He was funny, talkative, and most importantly, he didn't seem to take the game too seriously.  He wanted to win but he didn't want to be a jerk and he wanted to have a good time.  These are the kinds of opponents that make it worth playing in events.  If I always had to play against dick opponents, I would never travel to events.

Game 1: I win the die roll and play first.  I opened very well with t1 Champion of the Parish, t2 Thalia, and t3 Silverblade Paladin.  Thalia pushed him back on his Farseeks and I won quickly.

Game 2: He had the early removal for my creatures and was able to control the board with multiple Huntmasters after that.  I wasn't able to put up much pressure after that.

Game 3: I had an opening as powerful as game 1.  He was ramping with Farseek but he wasn't killing any of my creatures.  I had lethal on the board, looking to win on my 4th turn.  He miracles a Bonfire of the Damned and everything changes.  It sucked to lose my board in that kind of way, but that's what happens sometimes.  There's nothing that I could've done differently.  1-1.

Match 3: White Weenie vs. The Rock (GB Control)

Game 1: I took a risk this game and got burned because of it.  It was my 4th turn (I was on the draw) and I had my opponent down near 10.  He had missed his previous land drop so he was still on 3 lands.  If I commited my last creature in hand to the board (a Boros Elite) I would be able to swing for lethal the next turn.  I knew that he could have Mutilate but I had to take the risk.  I emptied my hand and said go.  My opponent ripped his 4th swamp off the top of his deck, slammed Mutilate on the table, and my chances of winning went from 99% to 0%.  It only took a couple more turns for me to lose after that.

Game 2: He had a lot of early removal and was able to play out multiple Geralf's Messengers and Desecration Demons.  I tried to fight him off but there was nothing that I could do.  This was definitely a disappointing match.  1-2.

Match 4: White Weenie vs. Mono G Elf Ramp

This is the deck that wants to play Garruk, Caller of Beasts as soon as possible and start slamming creatures on the table.  I knew that he would be packing plenty of small creatures in the hopes of getting me with a Craterhoof Behemoth, so I kept that in mind during the match.

Game 1: Both of us mulligan to 6 but my hand was a lot better than his.  I was able to get out some decent pressure and all he was able to do was play mana elves.  That's definitely not a bad thing, but he never drew into threats to cast.  Yes, that was certainly aided by the fact that I swung for lethal on t4, but still, he had 6 available mana on his 3rd turn so if he had a Garruk at that point, things may have been different.

Game 2: Same type of thing as game 1 except for the fact that he was trying to ramp into Craterhoof Behemoth off of a hand full of mana elves.  He tried to get the game state to a point where he could get Behemoth into play with plenty of attackers for lethal, but I was one turn too fast for him.  I was applying constant pressure and I was able to Fiend Hunter away his Elvish Archdruid the turn he played it, which would've enabled him to play Craterhoof and win the next turn.  2-2.

I really wanted to keep playing in this tournament, but both of my friends had already dropped and wanted me to enter a side event draft with them, so after a bit of convincing I dropped out too.  I was a little disappointed that I didn't keep playing but I ended on a good win and I'll be taking this deck to FNM again soon, so I didn't feel too bad.  Overall, I had a really fun day :)  I don't often get to travel so it was really fun for me to get out and play magic at a higher level event than my local tournament.

After playing White Weenie at this event, there are definitely some cards that stood out for me, both positively and negatively.  Banisher Priest was extremely powerful for me during every match.  She provided a good attacker, removed big threats, or just cleared the way for my other attackers to get in.  I never expected Knight of Glory to be an all-star, but he really never impacted a game at all.  I would basically avoid casting him in favor of nearly any other 2 drop that I could play.  I'm looking for replacements for him.  I also want to make the deck more resilient to hate.  I know that this is an all-out aggro deck, but I feel like the deck could be a little bit more stable in the face of, say, Mutilate or Bonfire (both of which destroyed me during my matches).  I'll be brewing and testing a bit more before my next update of this deck, but until then, here's a little teaser for you...

See you guys later.