Disclaimer: I am an imperfect being, and as such, my memory of things is not flawless. I don't remember if you played a Mountain or a Forest on turn 4, and I can't promise I remember the exact sequence of plays that led up to a given situation. Generally, I use all of that leadup just to give you an idea of a game state, and then describe the important decision that I do remember exactly. So, if you are someone I played against, don't be upset if I get a couple things wrong. I'm not trying to make things up or make you look bad.
States is my favorite tournament, for a lot of reasons. It gives you an opportunity to test your skills in a new Standard format. It rewards an increasingly awesome playmat to the top 8, and the entry fee support is definitely meaningful. But beyond all else, I feel like the title of State Champion carries more weight to it than a lot of things that are on par or above it in terms of difficulty, especially to non-Magic players. I don't think any sensible player will claim that winning States is better than top 8ing a Grand Prix, but try explaining that to your grandmother. It's sort of intuitive to the way we think. I mean, if we top 8 a GP, we're better than 1200 other people who were there, but if we're Louisiana Champion, we must be better than the whole state, right?
With this in mind, testing started very early. Probably earlier than it needed to, in all honesty, as basically nothing we started with got anywhere near being our choice for the tournament. Still, I think this is an important part of the process. Sometimes the path to success is finding all of the methods that don't work. We began with Pod, as it seemed to be the most apt for direct translation from the old Standard. It lost a couple value creatures and the Twin combo, but gained some new threats and lost a lot of its predators.
I played around with Pod for a little bit, but since everyone else was testing it as well, I figured it would be more productive to start working on other decks. I started working on a UB list that ultimately seemed worse than Solar Flare, which people were just beginning to discover was a real deck. I then took some time to hammer out the details of a BR aggro list that had a lot of potential. It ran a lot of synergistic cards like Chandra, Stromkirk Noble, Stormblood Berserker, Shrine, Volt Charge, and Tezzeret's Gambit, while splashing black for Diregraf Ghoul and Bump in the Night. The deck was pretty good, but a little too cute, and the mana base caused occasional problems.
During this period, I did a lot of testing with Joe Saia, and we made a lot of accurate conclusions about the format. First, Pod wasn't good enough. Second, most of the triple colored mana bases were way too unstable. Finally, that full on control was a suboptimal approach, and that every deck needed a powerful, proactive game plan. So we left everyone else to debate whether Junk Pod or BUG Pod was better, and just brewed aggro decks. I was on BR for a while, though I gradually moved towards Mono Red, while Joe brewed up what I still think is the best aggressive deck in the format, a saucy UW list that dropped Angelic Destinies on Mirran Crusaders and Geists to alpha strike for roughly a trillion on turn four.
I became pretty set on Mono Red, as it was fairly straightforward and destroyed anyone who didn't have a good hand. That was, of course, until I brought it out against the field at a Tuesday Night Magic and got Timely Reinforcements cast five times on me in one match (and Wurmcoil 4 times, in the same match). This was hardly the norm for the metagame, but it was an eye opener to the fact that the deck could be hated out very easily. I had gone into the tournament debating Red against Wolf Run and went out certain I was playing Wolf Run.
We tested some more at Tannon Grace's house on the Thursday prior to the tournament, and then again at Rocket's Hideout the night before. I became increasingly confident that I was playing the best deck, and both Tannon and Dustin Anderson were on the same plan. I made a couple of tweaks to our initial design, and registered the following:
Creatures:
4x Viridian Emissary
3x Solemn Simulacrum
3x Primeval Titan
2x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Acidic Slime
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Bird of Paradise
Planeswalkers:
3x Garruk, Primal Hunter
Non-Creature Spells:
4x Rampant Growth
4x Green Sun's Zenith
4x Beast Within
3x Slagstorm
1x Batterskull
Lands:
4x Copperline Gorge
4x Rootbound Crag
4x Inkmoth Nexus
2x Kessig Wolf Run
9x Forest
3x Mountain
Sideboard:
4x Ancient Grudge
3x Sword of Feast and Famine
2x Thrun, the Last Troll
2x Tree of Redemption
1x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Viridan Corrupter
1x Slagstorm
1x Ratchet Bomb
The key changes I made were dropping a Garruk for a mainboard Thrun, because I really hated not having a spell on five mana, and it makes a god GSZ target. I figured Garruk was a reasonable cut, because I had been drawing them in multiples a lot and figured three was sufficient for a five mana planeswalker. I also moved a Wurmcoil to the board to add the main deck Batterskull, an idea I have to credit Tannon for. Having a spell to cast for five is a nice plus, and its recursive ability makes it nearly impossible to deal with. As an additional benefit, it allows you to win very quickly with Inkmoth Nexus even if you don't draw a Wolf Run.
I arrived at the site way earlier than I needed to, because everyone had neglected to tell me that the starting time this year was 11 instead of 10, but I spent the time helping everyone get their decks together and shaking off the last vestiges of sleep from my brain. I think that finding the zone before the tournament starts is one of the most important steps in preparation for a big event, because if I'm distracted with other problems in life or if I'm flustered from rushing to the site, I'm going to play worse.
Representing Team Rocket, we had myself playing Wolf Run, Coleman Perret playing UB aggro-control with Reassembling Skeleton, Joe Saia playing UW aggro, Dustin Anderson playing Wolf Run, Tannon Grace playing Wolf Run, John Armstrong playing UR Counterburn, Nic Olsen playing Tokentown, Chase Usey playing Solar Flare, Slaughter playing (I think) Heartless Pod, Landon Richard playing UW Control, and Tony Derbigny playing something that I have since forgotten. I'm sure I'm missing someone there, but I feel like it's pretty close.
Round 1: UB Control
In round one, I got paired up against Donald, who I feel like I met before today, but can't place to a specific tournament. He was on a fairly spicy UB list running Runechanter's Pike. Game one was long in terms of time, but didn't feel terribly grindy. I resolved a Primeval Titan, he -2ed Liliana to take care of it, then Tribute to Hungered my Thrun, and ultimately slipped by an equipped Inkmoth for lethal. I boarded in the Swords, Thruns, and a couple of Grudges and took out Slagstorms, a Wurmcoil, and possibly a Garruk. In game two, I powered out some big threats quickly, Beast Within'ed a couple of lands, and outlasted his removal to win with Wolf Run damage.
Game three started with less than fifteen minutes on the clock, so I knew I would have to win fast. I resolved a Titan getting Nexus and Wolf Run, having already played one Nexus from my hand. He killed the Titan with a Tribute to Hunger, netting six life, and I untapped to play a second one, getting another Nexus and a Copperline Gorge. This was my biggest mistake of the day, as I thought, for some reason, that he had already killed one Nexus and that I couldn't actually get a fourth. He Snapcaster-Tributed my Titan and passed back with open mana. I had Garruk in my hand, but also had lethal damage in poison from Nexus and Wolf Run. After glancing up at the clock and seeing that we had less than five minutes, I decided that I had a better chance of winning in time by poison than by life, since he had gained a lot from the Tribute to Hungers. He had three cards in hand and I had three Inkmoths, so I decided that, since he would need three removal spells to stay alive, I should just go all in on the infect plan. He had the three removal spells, and I was left with a thoroughly dominant position, having drawn 8 cards off a pumped Birds, when we hit turn five, but my opponent survived and I was left with a draw.
0-0-1
Round 2: Junk Pod
I was disappointed to find myself paired up against my good friend John Canville, who had himself just drawn with our mutual friend Scott Celestin. When it rains, it pours. I wasn't sure exactly what he was playing, but I knew he was on a Pod list of some variety, which I feel is one of my best matchups. In game one, we traded blows for a little while, and he resolved a few formidable creatures, while I resolved a Primeval or two. At some point he shipped it back to me with several creatures on the field while he was tapped out, and after drawing and contemplating when I wanted to Slagstorm, I realized I had lethal Inkmoth on the board, and we went to game two.
Game two went similar to the first, except that some timely Acidic Slimes took care of my Wolf Runs. The critical turn was when I passed with Primeval and Wurmcoil on my board with two Solemns and a Beast Within in my hand while I was tapped out. He had several small creatures, plus a Phantasmal Image copying Wurmcoil. He untapped and dropped Elesh Norn, attacking for a ton. I ate a couple of his little guys and took the rest to my face. I untapped with at least eleven mana in play and drew a Slagstorm. I tanked for a little bit, then dropped both Solemns, netting a land and a card off of each. The idea here was to make him think that I was digging for an out and lead him into alpha striking, where I could proceed to eat his creatures after I Beast Within Elesh Norn, then Slagstorm away the scraps. I passed back and he thought for a few seconds before sending in the team. I imagine he knew I had the Beast Within, but the attack wasn't completely unreasonable anyway. I traded Wurmcoils, ate another dork, and untapped. I swung in with the team, Slagstormed away the chaff, and won with a Batterskulled Nexus a few turns later while he tried to draw out of it.
This matchup illustrates a lot of the reason I didn't like Pod coming into this event. All of its removal is sorcery speed, so you can't even represent it. Against most decks, even a single open mana is enough to at least make me reconsider attacking with a pumped Nexus, but I have nothing to fear, so I can do it any time I want. What's more, the versions running removal are forced into the situation of either tapping out to deal with my Titans and Wurmcoils, or leaving up ways to deal with my Inkmoth, and no realistic way to do both.
1-0-1
Round 3: RUW Control
I sat down for round 3 against Jeremy, who I suspected was playing some kind of control deck because, well, he was in the draw bracket. He led off with Clifftop Retreat, which immediately shattered any idea I had of what he might be playing. He followed it up with a Sulfur Falls while I simply curved out with Rampant Growth into Solemn into Titan. He cast a few Think Twices and a Forbidden Alchemy, but never found a counterspell or removal and went down pretty quickly. For game two, I boarded in Thrun, figuring he had to have some amount of counterspells and removal. He led off early with Burning Vengeance and filled his graveyard up with Think Twices and Alchemies, but I slipped a Wurmcoil through and dropped a Thrun at some point, and both match up pretty well against two damage burn spells.
I wish I could add more about this match, but it was over pretty quickly. I actually liked his deck, as I feel it is creative and should have a stellar aggro matchup, but it seems like his chances against Wolf Run have to be pretty poor, so it probably wasn't the right tournament for it.
2-0-1
Round 4: Mono Red
For this round, I got paired down against Mono Red piloted by Donald. I didn't know that when the match started, but I was fortunate to keep a hand with a Slagstorm and a Wurmcoil, plus a Viridian Emissary, which is really strong against them. He didn't have a one drop, which hurt him a lot, especially with me on the play, and by the time he had started to get something going, I was crashing with the Engine. I boarded in the Trees, the Wurmcoil, the Slagstorm, a couple of Grudges, and the Corrupter, taking out Garruks, Thrun, and a couple of Beast Withins. In game two, I kept 2x Wurmcoil, Batterskull, Rampant Growth, and three lands, which is as close to the nuts as the deck has against Red. I curved out into turn 4 Batterskull, which got Ancient Grudged, while he started beating down with Stromkirk Noble and Stormblood Berserker while Shrine ticked up. On turn 5 I played Wurmcoil, assuming it safe because he had yet to play a green source in either game. He proceeded to drop a Rootbound Crag, popping my Wurmcoil on my attack step, before casting another one to kill my second Wurmcoil and flashing it back on his turn to clear out one of my lifelinkers. He threw a shrine at me, and then popped me with some burn spells before I could stabilize. In game three, I had a somewhat slow draw, but Tree of Redemption held the fort long enough for Primeval to take over.
Game two of this match illustrates something super important about the current metagame: Red is still extremely powerful. I mean, if someone told you they resolved turn 4 Batterskull, turn 5 Wurmcoil, turn 6 Wurmcoil, would you think the Red player had won? The biggest impediment to Red's success is not actually Wurmcoil. The card is extremely good, but it takes time to get into play, and Red has a few ways to answer it. The real problem is timely reinforcements, but I really did not see much in the way of success for white-based control lists, so I think this could be a very good time for Red, provided they have the sense to start boarding Manabarbs. That card causes serious problems for Wolf Run, which is definitely the deck to beat right now.
3-0-1
Round 5: UW Control
I knew what my opponent was playing because I had sat next to him as he had, rather loudly, drawn with Dustin in the previous round. I knew he was playing control, and also that Dustin had given him his first game loss all day, which suggested to me that it was just as good of a matchup as I thought. We had a super long game one, something on the order of forty minutes, during which I reached 1 health and stayed there for a while when my plan of Beast Withining his lands to keep him off Titans slightly backfired. I pulled out some tricks to stabilize and at some point connected with Wurmcoil, putting the game out of his reach. Eventually Thrun + Engine + Wolf Run finished the job.
We boarded for game two, which took a while to get started. He wasn't doing anything with any particular urgency, even though I was up a game with fifteen minutes left. I wasn't planning to stall, and I didn't, but I knew going in that my plan was to survive, as killing him was largely irrelevant. My plan went well enough, until I reached a point where I had Garruk and Wurmcoil in my hand, with enough to cast both, and he had a Sun Titan out and an Oblivion Ring in his graveyard with one card in hand. Everything else in his yard that could be recurred was Ghost Quarters, which he had seemed perfectly happy to play up until now. I decided to play just Garruk and make a beast. My logic here, and it may be wrong, was that he has to attack and O-Ring Garruk or I'll just block with beasts long enough to ultimate, and from there, he's not winning the game in time. Once he does that, dropping Wurmcoil will more than put the game away. This is probably incorrect, in all honesty, as he's going to have to deal with Garruk anyway if he just O-Rings the Wurmcoil, and drawing six cards is pretty insane. As it was, he untapped and hardcast an O-Ring on Garruk, leaving me way behind. I drew a few creatures to stall, but ran out of blockers with 17 seconds on the clock.
This should have been a win for me, and I threw it away several times. Beyond the incident I described above, I killed him fairly quickly in game one once the kill was on board. Why? He wasn't going to draw out of it, and if I eat another minute with small attacks and holding the fort, he doesn't finish game two. I was pretty tilted by this match, as he was playing pretty loose throughout, including casting more than one timely reinforcements for life when he was ahead on life. Nevertheless, I still could have had the win, and it's ultimately my fault.
3-0-2
Round 6: Tokentown
This was actually the matchup I had been dreading all day, and not just because the matchup is not great for Wolf Run. My opponent for this round was Nic Olsen, April's nephew who had spent the whole day destroying people twice his age and who I was rooting hard for to win the tournament. It was a rough situation, because I still wanted to top 8, but he was X-1 and was basically (or so I thought) a lock. Honestly, I think way more can be learned from his performance than my own. I think a big part of his success, beyond that he actually plays quite well, is that he's not afraid of losing. When you get to the late stages of a big tournament, it's easy to become distracted by how close you are, and he wasn't, and was playing better because of it. I thought momentarily about scooping him in, but decided against it. Not for my sake, I'd have been happy to trade my top 8 chances for his, but because I knew that's not how he wanted to get there. So we shuffled up to grind it out the old fashioned way.
Game one was a complete blowout. I even stuck a Wurmcoil at some point, but the combination of Anthems and Hero made it so that I was facing 30+ points of damage by turn 6, and I was down for the count quickly. I boarded out all of the Garruks and a couple Beast Within, which matched up very poorly with the Token Anthem, and brought in Slagstorm and Wurmcoil plus the Tree of Redemptions. Game two was a perilous affair. On the crucial turn, I survived an enormous Hero attack with several tokens, electing to tick my Ratchet Bomb up to deal with his four anthems rather than blowing it on the tokens themselves. Normally this would have been a crazy plan, but after popping the anthems, his tokens were at a perfect size to get Slagstormed away. I managed to hit in for lethal before he could get any more gas. Game three was anticlimactic, as he kept a hand with a lot of anthems and didn't draw creatures in time to keep me from crushing in with my team.
4-0-2
So here I was again, win and in round. This is definitely the most stressful part of the event, where your whole tournament success lies on playing one match well. Naturally, I was nervous as Hell.
Round 7: Wolf Run
Well, can't dodge the most popular deck at the tournament forever. My opponent Alfred sits down, we chat a bit waiting for the round to start, and agree to scoop to superior board position if time runs out. I don't remember much of game one. It was pretty uninteractive and I was on the play. I had multiple Titans and he was forced into a situation late game where he had to chump an Nexus with two of his own or die from poison, and doing so left him without blockers on the next turn. I boarded in Swords, Grudges, and Corrupter for Slagstorms and a couple of Garruks. In game two, I resolved a sword on a Viridian Emissary and started getting in, but it got Ancient Grudged and I couldn't recover.
So it's onto game three, for top 8. He taps out at some point and I play and equip Sword on an Emissary, getting in and playing a Bird post combat. He untaps, plays and equips Sword, crashes in, leaving me with a second Sword in hand, and plays a post combat Garruk, making a beast. He ships it back to me and I draw Primeval. So the board state now is 5 lands, Birds, Sworded Emissary for me, and him with six lands, Garruk on 4, a beast and a sworded Emissary. I had Swords and Primeval in hand and he has two cards and has one land open. So my options here are to play and equip sword on Birds, hitting both Garruk and him, then untapping but being unable to cast Primeval. This is the worst option, as it kills Garruk, but only make him discard his worst card, and I'll lose my Primeval to his sword. The other option is to play and equip the second sword to the Emissary, hitting him twice to make him discard his two cards and playing Primeval. The problem here is that if he untaps and draws four cards with Garruk, his chance of hitting a Titan or land + GSZ is pretty good. So I decided to just kill the Garruk and play Titan. See what I missed in there, because I'm an idiot, is playing the Sword pre-combat to not lose it to his Sword. Yea, that happened. He GSZ'd up an Acidic Slime the next turn, and his sword took the game over pretty quickly from there.
I congratulated him on his win and informed him that he was basically guaranteed to win out because the person I lost to last year won out. Guess what? Tradition continues. Call me the Kingmaker. I landed way down in 19th.
So at the end of the day, Rocket's did pretty well, with Tannon top 8ing, Coleman drawing himself out, Landon recovering his 0-2 start into a 5-2 finish, and Dustin, Nic, and myself finishing in the top 25 as well.
As for card selections, the mainboard Thrun was a nice touch, but not worth the loss of the fourth Garruk, who was superb basically every time he came out. The fourth Ancient Grudge out of the board was utterly worthless and should have been perhaps a second Ratchet Bomb, which would help out the Tokentown matchup. Batterskull was phenomenal all day, and I would absolutely not run it without one. I think the deck needs another Wolf Run, because people have started running ways to kill the first two. Other than that, I highly recommend it, as it is definitely the most consistent deck in the format right now.
Big thanks and congratulations to Tannon, thanks for loaned cards and props on the top 4 finish. Also to Joe Saia, who I did most of my testing with in the weeks leading up to the event. And of course, the rest of the testing group for being awesome, and Rocket's Hideout for all the support.
'Till the next tournament.
~Kyp Maher
