Team Open in Philadelphia: Audio Blog

Hi, folks! On the way home from Philadelphia, I recorded an audio blog about my experiences playing and figuring out Standard for the Team Open. Click here to check it out:

Team Constructed Open Recap

The list I played in Standard:

4 Fetid Pools
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Desert of the Glorified
1 Desert of the Mindful
1 Ifnir Deadlands
7 Island
6 Swamp

4 Disallow
4 Censor
4 Fatal Push
4 Hieroglyphic Illumination
3 Vraska's Contempt
3 Revolutionary Rebuff
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Essence Scatter
1 Supreme Will
1 Pull from Tomorrow
3 Ravenous Chupacabra
2 The Scarab God
2 Torrential Gearhulk

SB:
4 Moment of Craving
1 Golden Demise
2 Walk the Plank
3 Duress
2 Negate
1 Treasure Map
2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

New Plan

Whelp, some things happened and all of a sudden, Standard looks a little different.

I left you last week(ish) with a Standard list that I thought looked promising, and then 8 of the cards got banned. Here's a new plan:

4 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Jadelight Ranger

2 The Scarab God

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Merfolk Branchwalker

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

3 Walking Ballista

2 Hostage Taker

2 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

3 Nissa, Steward of Elements

3 Fatal Push

5 Forest

2 Swamp

4 Drowned Catacomb

4 Fetid Pools

2 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Hostage Taker

1 Fatal Push

4 Moment of Craving

1 Negate

2 Essence Scatter

4 Duress

Even more than before, I am really excited about Jadelight Ranger. Reason one is that Rogue Refiner's absence leaves a gaping hole for a value three-drop, just not one that specifically abuses Energy. Reason two is that, since we have no Attune with Aether anymore, the land count in the deck goes up, which makes Jadelight Ranger's Explores even better. This deck skews away from the Energy mechanic, since we no longer have access to a bunch of Energy laying around. Longtusk Cub is no longer going to be a lot more than just a 2/2 on turn 2. However, Exploring on Jadelight Ranger and Merfolk Branchwalker is still a combo with Winding Constrictor, as are Walking Ballista, Yahenni, and Glint-Sleeve Siphoner. Glint-Sleeve never really was a normal Energy card, and a Siphoner with two Energy counters isn't much worse than a Siphoner with twelve Energy counters, so it's staying in the deck.

Nissa ties the room together. It's a really good three drop on an empty board that's removal-proof, and also a fantastic late game card. Scarab God blah blah blah.

4 Jadelight Ranger

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

4 Walking Ballista

3 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Glorybringer

4 Longtusk Cub

2 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

2 Fatal Push

4 Harnessed Lightning

4 Aether Hub

3 Canyon Slough

4 Blooming Marsh

3 Dragonskull Summit

3 Rootbound Crag

3 Sheltered Thicket

2 Forest

2 Swamp

1 Mountain

2 Gonti, Lord of Luxury

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Ravenous Chupacabra

4 Moment of Craving

2 Fatal Push

4 Duress

This deck goes the other direction and continues the Energy plan. We get to rock with Constrictors and Glint-Sleeves in place of our Rogue Refiners, so it's really kinda similar to Temur Energy with the blue swapped out with black. We get to kill lots of creatures, which may or may not be that great in the upcoming format. I'm kind of expecting more Abzan or Esper Tokens and blue control decks than what we previously had, due to the red cards that got banned. If that doesn't happen and killing creatures turns out to be good, this deck does plenty of it.

You'll notice the Yahenni, Undying Partisan in both lists. It's a card that I'm kind of high on at the moment. The Token decks all run Fumigate and lots of creatures that die, and against control it's a Haste creature that's Fumigate-proof. I think it's in a good place in the format, but only in creature decks that can kill their opponent's stuff pretty easily.

What I've found on Magic Online so far is lots of decks that Ravenous Chupacabra isn't that great against. I was expecting to nuke lots of Longtusk Cubs and Whirler Virtuosos, but mostly I'm hitting Hidden Stockpile tokens, which isn't awesome. When it's been good, though, it's been real good. It helps push your early threats through for damage and the body is very relevant when you are putting pressure on. We'll see how the format shakes out, but the only 4-drop in that slot that is appreciably better when Chupacabra is bad is probably Gonti, which is a card that's always on my radar.

I've yet to cast a Tetzimoc, but I really want to before I dismiss it, but I'm not playing against a lot of midrange mirrors yet.

However, I think I'll be doing more work on Modern in the coming week or so here, since I am again playing in an SCG team open, and likely going to be playing Modern again. Since we last left off, I've cut the Blood Moons out of the board in favor of another Blightning(!), a Grim Lavamancer, and an Obstinate Baloth. I'm finding that the discard is great against Valakut, so long as it's not Inquisition of Kozileks, and that Blood Moon doesn't do enough against Tron anyways. At the last team open I played, there were lots of midrange mirrors and control decks that we faced in the Modern slot, which makes sense to me. Your Modern player is likely to be someone who really likes the format and tinkers around with the list of their favorite deck a lot, not someone who just jams Tron when it's in favor. That's my theory anyways. Hopefully we won't see a lot of Tron (or Dredge, or Living End, for that matter), or if we do, then their Standard and Legacy players suck. But, we'll see, since the Standard format just took a big turn, I might be playing that instead. Wish me luck.

Initial Thoughts on Rivals of Ixalan

Magic is sweet. We basically have to take a long break from the game during December, due to family, Modo Cube, and up here in Vermont, weather. As soon as the new year starts, they draw us back in with spoiler season. There are some cool cards in this set that look to shake things up, and then some other cards that do the opposite. Let's check em out.

I really missed Pharika's Cure or Surge of Righteousness being in Standard. Moment of Craving looks like a better sideboard card than either of them, and it really shores up the Ramunap Red matchups. You still want to have a plan against Hazoret, but one of these plus a good curve should get you into the later turns.

I like overloading to beat aggressive decks with my sideboard cards. The reason is that aggro decks give you less time to draw your sideboard cards than slower decks do. Against Ramunap Red or Mardu or B/R Vehicles or whatever aggro deck exists, you've either stabilized or are dead by turn 5 or so, meaning you've looked at around 12 of your 60 cards. In this case, if you're only boarding in three cards, you're only 60% to actually draw one of them. Against, say, U/B Control or an Energy Mirror, the games last and the outcomes are undecided for much longer, meaning you have more time to draw those cards that swing the matchup. I foresee myself playing 4 of these in every sideboard as long as I'm playing a black deck in Standard and an aggro deck is at least a little represented.

Really cool design, this seems like it's the best of the Ascend cards for a normalish midrange kind of deck. I don't think it's worth it, since while its ability is card advantage, you don't get the value immediately and there's a lot of setup to make it work. Lots of times, even if you have an Ascend theme or subtheme in your deck, you still just won't have it online, and you've cast a Fighting Drake. It is a pure payoff card and doesn't help facilitate Ascend by itself, unlike...

Tendershoot Dryad also gives you value every turn, but needs less setup to get that value and just has Ascend as a cherry-on-top. I like this a lot better than Twilight Prophet in a vacuum, however, the competition for five-drops in Standard is tight. The Scarab God, Glorybringer, Liliana Death's Majesty, and Confiscation Coup are all tough cards to beat in a midrange deck, but I could be proven wrong. The Dryad looks like it's better in a G/W or Abzan tokens kind of deck, which looks to be shaping up really nicely with this set.

This card is really cool, and I think it's really good, but I really can't imagine it's going to see play until Chandra rotates out of the format. Watch out for this one being really good in the future. It does a lot of cool things that a lot of decks are looking for, but Chandra just does better.

What I said about Tendershoot Dryad holds true for Angrath, as far as the viability of 5-drop threats. This card needs to be a better inclusion than both Glorybringer and Liliana Death's Majesty. That said, I'm still at least a little high on this card, at least because it's very similar to Ob Nixilis Reginited and we've seen that card do work in the past. It's certainly a more aggressive card than Ob Nixilis, which isn't always what you're looking for, but it can still create some value each turn.

So of course this card isn't for me, but its existence is interesting. This is a really, really powerful card in a certain kind of control deck that hasn't existed for a little while. In the days of Sphinx's Revelation, Divination was good in the early turn to dig you into your answers and was still fine in the late game since all you wanted to do was rifle through your deck and find Revelations. We don't have Revelation nowadays, but the difference is that in the late game, this card is fire. This card might push the current control strategies to a more pure card advantage style deck, which changes the format quite a bit for the midrange decks of the world.

Okay, so this card is ambitious, and almost certainly not a maindeck card unless we are living in a very very strange world. However, it might just be the best thing to do as an over-the-top midrange breaker. Other options are Vraska and River's Rebuke, which are good of course. However, this card gives you a ton of options as a late game topdeck that wrecks the board. If you have, like, 9 mana in play, I can't fathom a situation where you don't just win immediately when you draw this, barring an Essence Scatter or something. I'm going to be starting with this as a one- or maybe two-of in my Sultai Energy sideboard. It's also just totally awesome, which makes it definitely worth playing.

Here is a card that I have no idea about. I think that it is a card that requires an entirely new deck than what we have seen in Standard so far, but it's at least intriguing. There are a lot of great cards to have die and come back, including Gonti, Rogue Refiner, Jadelight Ranger, and Ravenous Chupacabra. However, it's slow, might not even be as powerful than the things that are faster than it, and requires a lot to go right in order to work. It's a cool idea to try, but I think the odds that it works are low, I wouldn't be surprised if a deck came out of it.

This is a card that hasn't seen that much hype this spoiler season, so maybe I am overestimating it, but it's definitely my favorite card in the set. This card has three things that it can do that are somewhere between fantastic and good. First, you could get two lands in your hand. You might think that is a little weak, since they are just lands, but the thing is, that means that the top two cards of your library were lands, and now they are gone and you are drawing the cards that were under them. That's good! You had to draw those lands anyways! Alternatively, you can get one card and make a 3/2. That sounds a lot like Rogue Refiner to me, minus the energy boost, and I'm all about putting four more Rogue Refiners in my deck (or adding that effect to a non-blue deck). Scenario three is making a 4/3 creature and ensuring you are drawing a good card. This is the worst of the options, but the good news is that if you play with a deck that has Winding Constrictor, all of a sudden you have a 6/5 on turn three (or a 4/3 and a free land). In the process of tuning Sultai Energy, I've been waffling between my non-Rogue Refiner three-drops. Deathgorge Scavenger, XUG Nissa, and Rishkar are all solid, but I think Jadelight Ranger will settle it. We shall see, but I have high hopes for this one.

So I think this is the only card in the set that gets played in Modern Jund, so let's take a look. First, it does nothing against Tron, and the ideal scenario is that your land hate takes care of both Tron and Valakut, so that's a real strike against it. The second is that it's a cantrip, which is cool, but in the matchups where you are looking for this effect, you aren't winning via incremental card advantage, you want knockout blows to their combos. Third is that it hoses your own fetchlands and creaturelands. This is normal when you play Blood Moon in the sideboard of Jund, but it's a little easier to play with and around. You'll still be able to cast your double green and black spells, and all you have to do is cut some fetchlands to be almost entirely unaffected by it. I like that it's easier on you than playing Blood Moon, but I dislike that it has fewer applications, including the one glaring one in that Tron lands still work just fine. I don't think that it's worth it to use the sideboard slots to shut off Valakut almost exclusively, but we shall see. I do like that they are interested in making land hosers for Modern, since the big mana decks are a real problem. Well, a problem for me at least, the format is fine, I just lose to them a lot. Maybe another couple of hate cards can really turn the format around.

Woof.

I'm gonna start with this as a 4-of in Sultai Energy. I've been switching back and forth between Gonti, Hostage Taker, and Bristling Hydra in the four-drop slot, but Chupacabra just might take the cake here. It's gonna trounce the red decks, as long as you can deal with Hazoret, and it might swing the format back in favor of Sultai Energy rather than Temur. You can now go toe to toe on power level with Glorybringer much easier, and don't even get started with Scarab God and Liliana Death's Majesty. Have we gotten to the point where Fatal Push is no longer a maindeck card? Sounds crazy, but Ravenous Chupacabra is a little crazy. Magic is a weird game sometimes.

Thanks for reading. You can catch me on twitter @griffinzoth if you think all my analyses are wrong, which they might be. Who knows. Spoiler seasons is great.

EDIT: For reference, here is the list I'm gonna try out in Standard when Rivals drops - 

4 Attune with Aether

4 Fatal Push

2 Blossoming Defense

4 Glint Sleeve Siphoner

4 Longtusk Cub

4 Winding Constrictor

4 Jadelight Ranger

4 Rogue Refiner

4 Ravenous Chupacabra

2 Liliana Death's Majesty

2 Walking Ballista

1 Nissa, Steward of Elements

4 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Fetid Pools

4 Forest

2 Swamp

1 Island

4 Duress

4 Moment of Craving

2 Tetzimoc, Primal Death

1 Negate

2 Essence Scatter

2 Hostage Taker

SCG Baltimore

Let me first start off by saying that Baltimore, Maryland is a long ass drive away from my cozy home up here in Hardwick, Vermont.

I teamed up with Vermonter Ze'eva Chasan and former Vermonter Jordan McCutcheon for SCG Baltimore. We decided the formats pretty early on, as Ze'eva has a lot of practice in Legacy and Jordan had the most practice in Standard, and I was pretty much a brick in both. Modern's more my speed. I played the same list as my last post with Oozes and 1 Abrupt decay. Ze'eva is a Burn master, so she played that. Jordan was really high on the Ben Stark Sand Strangler red deck, and it was really good.

It was my first ever team constructed tournament, and I had a blast. It's just a really fun experience, even though we didn't do particularly well. My teammates were awesome. I would look over and say to myself, "Wow, they can't win" and then two minutes later I'd see them shuffling up and they'd say "I won." In the team event, I actually only finished three of the eight matches we played, Jordan and Ze'eva either both won or both lost before I had the chance to.

We finished the day 4-4, and then I played the Modern Classic on Sunday. I played almost all fair decks throughout the whole weekend, including U/W or Jeskai 4 times, the mirror or pseudo mirror 4 times, and some Grixis Death's Shadow. I went 5-3 in the Modern Classic.

I am most proud of beating Abzan twice, once in the Open and once in the classic. The matchup on paper normally favors them immensely, not only because of how good Lingering Souls is straight up, but also how it nullifies your Liliana of the Veil, while making their Lilianas better. Recently, people have added Gideon, Ally of Zendikar out of the sideboard for even more midrange firepower, and it's another card that's super hard to beat. However, Bitterblossom completely overperformed here, since my 2 drop was lights-out against Liliana, but their's would just walk right into her. Also, Dreadbore was amazing, killing Lilianas, both of the Veil and the Last Hope, and Gideons, in addition to any creature that my opponents had. The sideboard plan was awesome as well. I bring in 2 Blightning, 1 Eternal Witness, and 3 Kitchen Finks, and all of those are great in the midrange battles.

As for the U/W and Jeskai matchups, I kinda went 1-2, but really I was about to lose a matchup but we lost our team match before I could. I ran into a problem that I found out about in midrange vs control matchups back in the days of Thragtusk Jund against Sphinx's Revelation control decks. Having a good game two and three matchup is great, as most of your control matchups get better after sideboard, but they have to be damn good to actually eke out the match win. Magic is just a high variance game, and if you bank too much on those two games of the match and disregard setting your deck up for game one against control, then you are setting yourself up to fail if you have awkward draws in just one of those games. This makes me want to address the main deck, mostly the threat suite. The good news, when fighting control matchups, is that since the games go long, you are going to have more time than usual to see the cards that are there to swing the match in your favor.

I also lost a match to Merfolk and had a too-close-for-comfort match against Humans in the team open that we did not get to finish. Merfolk has interestingly become something of a roadblock for this list. On paper, the matchup looks really good, but their deck is very consistent and can punish you for stumbling on lands or by drawing too many.

I halfway liked Scavenging Ooze and halfway hated it. It was solid when I exiled a million of my opponents' creatures and gained a bunch of life, but that didn't happen that often. I hit one opponent's copy of Lingering Souls before it could be flashed back, but that wasn't really even that good and didn't work that well. It was supposed to be good against Storm, but it's really just an easy Lightning Bolt or mini Grapeshot target. It also is just straight Grizzly Bears against the UW deck, never ever ever has it been problematic for an opponent's Snapcaster Mages, and outside of that it just doesn't do anything there.

Moving forward, I want to give Tireless Tracker a try. It's a little bit like Courser of Kruphix, a card that has done good work in the deck in the past that was cut for mana consistency reasons. Three of the green midrange decks I played against had them and they looked great. If all your friends jumped off a bridge, etc etc, but it seems like it's what we're looking for. Tracker is a single green, great with the high density of fetchlands, awesome in control/midrange fights, and is a good mana sink that can straight up walk away with the game later on, similar to Ooze. I have a feeling that Tracker might help out against both Merfolk, as a late game card to pull away with, and against control matchups as at least a 2-for-1 or 3-for-1 if you play it right.

I was planning on doing an audio blog post about this whirlwind of a weekend, but I've come down with a nasty cold and probably won't be doing anything voice-related for a little bit, hopefully I'll be back on the ol' stream soon to pwn some newbs. Thanks for reading!

SCG Regionals Audio Blog(s)

Hey folks! This weekend I went to SCG Regionals in Syracuse NY. I recorded a little podcasty-audio blog thing on the way there, and then another one after the tournament. First up is the pre-tournament recording, recorded the Friday before the tournament.

SCG Regionals Pre-Tournament

Here is the post-tournament recording:

SCG Regionals Post-Tournament

List, for reference, that I ended up playing:

4 Tarmogoyf
4 Grim Flayer
1 Sprouting Thrinax
2 Huntmaster of the Fells
3 Bitterblossom

4 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Liliana of the Veil
4 Fatal Push
3 Lightning Bolt
3 Kolaghan's Command
2 Dreadbore

4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village

3 Kitchen Finks
3 Blood Moon
2 Blightning
2 Shadow Guildmage
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Duress
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Eternal Witness

Sultai Energy in Standard

Decklist:

4 Aether Hub

4 Blooming Marsh

4 Botanical Sanctum

2 Fetid Pools

4 Forest

2 Island

1 Swamp

4 Fatal Push

4 Attune with Aether

3 Blossoming Defense

2 Confiscation Coup

4 Glint-Sleeve Siphoner

4 Longtusk Cub

4 Winding Constrictor

3 Deathgorge Scavenger

1 Rishkar, Peema Renegade

4 Rogue Refiner

3 Bristling Hydra

3 Walking Ballista

Sideboard:

4 Negate

3 Duress

4 Hostage Taker

1 Deathgorge Scavenger

1 Walking Ballista

2 Essence Scatter

What I like about this list over the Temur Energy deck is the Glint-Sleeve Siphoners. That's pretty much the big draw. At first Hostage Taker impressed me a lot, but I've relegated it to the sideboard for now. Siphoner is the big edge that we have over Temur Energy, which I think is worth it. My experience, or how I feel at least, is that our control matchups are better than Temur's, but our aggro matchups get a little worse. The mirror or pseudo-mirror seems like it's 50-50ish. Where I think we have an advantage over Temur is against the Abzan token decks, since we have access to Walking Ballista.

Let's run through the changes I've made to the Jessup brothers' initial list. First, I fell in love with Deathgorge Scavenger. I got to the point where I just wanted it in the main, first one, then two, then three. The problem with Rishkar is that it gets seriously tempo'd out by opponents with Magma Sprays and Shocks, and it's really only at its best with a Snake in play. A few sets ago, we could expect our Snakes to live with more regularity, but everyone either has access to Fatal Push and Abrade at this point, making Rishkar nothing more than a 3/3 Llanowar Elf most of the time. And even when it's better than that, it's usually because you are flooding the board and walking into a Fumigate. Deathgorge, on the other hand, is amazing in the metagame right now. It hits for 4 and fights opposing Search for Azcanta. It gains life against Red decks. It also eats all the embalm and eternalize creatures out of the Tokens decks and God Pharaoh's Gift decks. It's pretty much at its worst against Energy decks, which are just a big midrange battle, so I board it out there, but I've been really pleased.

I've cut my Hostage Takers and replaced them with Bristling Hydras. The biggest reason is that Hostage Takers are abysmal against any sort of control decks, whereas Hydras are at their best in those matchups but never abysmal against anything. I found myself having lots of games where I was stuck with useless Hostage Takers in my hand and losing against control, thinking that if they were Hydras instead they would be amazing and I would have definitely win. I made the swap, knowing that other matchups would suffer for it, but to my surprise, the Hydras have been pretty reasonable against Red and Tokens. Hostage Takers are so backbreaking that I still wanted access to them though, so they sit in the board to bring in when Hydras aren't at their best. I usually make the swap against Red and Tokens, and board in Takers against Energy decks as well, but leave in my Hydras there.

The Jessups had a couple of top end cards, like maybe a couple Scarab Gods and Vraskas in the 75. In place of those, I've got Confiscation Coup. I found it to be the most backbreaking card against midrange mirrors while also being really solid against Red decks. Unlike the Scarab God, it is pretty bad against Control decks, but we've improved our chances there with other card choices, so I felt like it was okay. Also it's 10,000 tickets online, blargablarg. Still, Confiscation Coup has been really, really good. I have attacked with more Hazorets than I ever thought I would have with this deck.

The sideboard is pretty self explanatory. The 4th Dinosaur, the 4th Ballista, the Hostage Takers, and then Duresses and Negates and Essence Scatters. I have been toying with Gonti in the sideboard, but I don't like the double black casting cost. If I was to move away from Confiscation Coup, then that option would be a little better, since I would have no double blue cards and could go back to 2 Swamps 1 Island. Bringing in Hostage Taker against Red is a little nerve wracking, but even stealing a 1 or 2 drop and casting it the same turn before they untap is often a winning play.

If you like the looks of it, give it a try. Or, you can check out my stream! I've been getting into streaming on Twitch a little bit at twitch.tv/griffinlussier and you can also check out past streams I've done here.

Thanks for reading!

Jundpdates

So it's been a minute since the last update here. Let's see what's going on in ol' Griff's life and what's coming up.

1. I worked a bunch all summer at my day job and finally finished up Pigs vs Monsters pre-production. I have since quit my job to do Pigs/Magic more full time, with an option to go back to work whenever I want if I fail at both.

2. Being away from any big cities with FNMs and whatnot has made it difficult to play any real Magic, so I'm in the process of boosting up my Magic Online account and cashing in most of my paper collection to do so. Before I go headlong into Modern, I'm starting out with playing a bunch of Standard, which I actually like a lot at the moment, which isn't always the case with this format. I've also been streaming a bunch of the Standard I'm playing, so if you're interested, check out twitch.tv/griffinlussier. At the moment I'm only playing Standard and working on Sultai Energy, but in the near future I'll be jamming and tuning Modern Jund.

3. In the near future, I'm planning to hit up as many SCG events as I can. I'm quite a ways away from most of them, but I'm planning on driving to any of them that are in Washington DC or closer. Did you know that you have to take a fucking rocket ship to get to Ohio? It's so far away it may as well not even exist.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about the actual Magic I got to play between my last post and now.

A buddy of mine and I traveled to SCG Syracuse back in August. I rumbled with the current Jund list and liked it quite a bit. The only changes I've made are to switch Tasigurs out for Sprouting Thrinaxes. I was really underwhelmed with Tasigur, but I've loved Thrinax. It makes combat rough, makes sweepers bad, great against removal and Liliana, and is castable under a Blood Moon. If it weren't for my Blood Moon sideboard package, I'd be more interested in Courser of Kruphix, Kitchen Finks, Eternal Witness, or, now after the Planeswalker Legend rule change, Liliana the Last Hope. I also split 2 Scavenging Ooze and 2 Grim Flayers instead of the 4 Flayers in anticipation of Dredge.

It's been a couple of months, but let's see if I can remember all my matches. Round 1 I played Abzan Death's Shadow, which is a rough matchup on paper but I was able to win, largely on the back of Bitterblossom and Sprouting Thrinax.

In round 2 I was crushed by Grixis Death's Shadow. Unlike the Abzan Death's Shadow deck, I actually think this matchup is pretty close, maybe 50-50ish, but it sure didn't seem like it during the games.

Rounds 3, 4, 5, and 6 saw me beat Dredge, Affinity, GB Midrange, and Burn in some tight matchups. Bitterblossom was crazy good against Affinity and Green/Black.

Round 7 was against Caleb Scherer with Storm. Since they play 7 cost reducers that are easy targets for my removal, I like this matchup quite a bit, but some bad draws got the worst of me and I was defeated 2-0. Caleb, of course, is a Storm master and dealt me exactsies one game when I had lethal the next turn, womp womp.

Round 8 I completely lucksacked my way around BW Eldrazi. I like the matchup, but I ripped Huntmaster of the Fells like every time I needed it both games.

Round 9 I was paired against Jim Davis (yuck) playing Tron (also yuck). In the first game, I actually managed to secure the board and had a clock going against Jim having just lands, but he drew back to back Wurmcoil Engines, and don't ya know, they were pretty good. In the second I think I made a pretty critical mistake by not flashing back an Ancient Grudge on a Wurmcoil token, if memory serves, which ended up costing me quite a bit, until of course, Jim topdecked Ugin into Ulamog that would have just killed me anyways.

So I was 2 SCG ringers away from making Day 2. The deck seemed great, very powerful, metagame called correctly. Soon I'll do a more at-length post about Sultai Energy in Standard that I've been working on before I get back into the Modern saddle.