Test Me Test Me, Why Don't You Arrest Me

It's Sunday morning as I write this, and yesterday I played in the MTG Arena Zone Open on MTG Melee. I really like these events because they're carefree, free to play, and nothing to win or lose but bragging rights. Of course, if you know me, bragging rights are the only currency I care about.

Here's the list I played.

In classic Griffin style, I wrote all about how I liked Knight of the Ebon Legion but not enough to play it, then decided later to play it. It was solid. It has a low floor because it's only one mana to cast, and it doesn't need a lot of other things to go on around it in order for it to be good. It also pressures your opponent's life total pretty well, since you can trigger its counter pretty often between either beatdowns on your opponent or Locthwain, Thoughtseize, and Shocklands on yourself. I'm also only playing three copies at the moment, which works well for Knight because they are okay but not ideal in multiples. Playing only three Glint Sleeve Siphoners or Magmatic Channelers seems pretty loose since Siphoners are so good in multiples and Channelers need deckbuilding work to maximize.

I also am up to four four-mana planeswalkers in the deck, two Chandra, one Liliana, and one Vraska. Having a mix gives you the effect that we're looking for, but avoids the legend rule. I think that Chandra is the best of them, but all three are solid in the format at the moment.

In the sideboard, I decided to go with my 3x By Force plan. I never ran into the Forsaken Monument deck, but there were a couple running around and it felt good to be prepared.

I ended up playing against Sultai (or Yasharn Sultai) three times and Esper Yorion Doom Foretold once. The swiss was only four rounds because there was a pretty light turnout, whereas earlier iterations of this tournament had over one hundred the times I played it previously. I think that they hadn't run them for the last few weeks here for whatever reason, but hopefully they pick up steam again. It's a fun time.

I won my first match against Sultai. Scavenging Ooze did a lot of work to make sure I never had to deal with Uro, and I ended up just killing them with attackers and discard spells.

What's nice about the Sultai matchup is that you don't necessarily have to attack them to death with small creatures, but if you do that can certainly work. You just need to have some plan to either gain some leverage from your tempo or to out-grind them in the long game. That seems like it's hard to do against the Uro and Hydroid Krasis deck, but Castle Locthwain gives us a big edge in that regard, as does stuff like Inscription of Ruin, Chevill, Ooze, and our Planeswalkers. Add to that we play 24 lands, three of which are Locthwain and four are cycling lands, and we also are drawing way more spells with our card draw throughout the game.

In the second round I was paired against Esper Yorion Doom Foretold and lost quite badly. It's a pretty tough matchup but I have been able to beat similar decks in the past. I beat Sultai again in round three but then lost to it in round four in what later I found out was a win-and-in. Nothing really special about the match, just had draws that didn't really cooperate.

All in all, I really liked the decklist. I think if you can average beating Sultai twice out of three times with a deck like this, then you're in really good shape. I managed to hit a slice of the metagame that wasn't exactly hostile to us, but also not ideal, and had a solid shot at Top 8. The only real change I'd be interested in making would be to add a Kazandu Mammoth back into the list somewhere. Having a little extra green mana to make better use of Scavenging Ooze would help in a lot of matchups.

Thanks for reading. If you get a chance, check out the MTGAZone Historic Opens, that hopefully will pick back up to every weekend from here on out. They're a really fun time and a good way to get some high quality reps in. See ya later.