Ghent, a place to go dark

Me (in the bottom left corner), my team (Théo Mugnier and Thibaut Cantaluppi) and the so-called manager

So both of my MtG friends and I who have made up the Salt Shakers team for awhile had seen that Ghent would have a team Magic Fest. We were even giddier when it was announced that the event wasn't a unified event! As all of us tend to play Lightning Bolts in our decks to a certain extent, unified events would have been quite the hassle to prepare our decks for. Also we loooooooove fries and greasy food, and what better place to eat those than in Belgium?

As for our deck choices, we were originally deep in thought about them before the Hogaak bans. I was thinking about Twiddle Storm, as it was the only deck I played that could regularly beat the speed of the meta back then, or Mill, since it naturally fought graveyard decks. Théo our 'I-am-not-lucky-on-topdecks' player was thinking about switching from his few decks to Hogaak, and Thibaut, our resident 'I-can-play-anything' player was thinking about making the switch too. And theeeeeeeen... Well the bans and unbans happened.

Boom! Our world had flipped on its head and our choices had to change. One problem I had with Twiddle storm was its consistency, more often than not, the deck lost to itself rather than to the opponents interaction. In the Hogaak era, it would have been a good choice as I would rather die to inconsistency about 15% to 25% of the time than die to the big Ho 100% of the time, but now in the new, slower era of Magic full of interaction and counterspells, Twiddle wasn't that appealing anymore. Even though we had developed the pack to be more consistent by adding Ad Nauseam, making us call the deck Ad Nauseam Twiddle Storm (or ANTS for short), the bad draws felt too bad for a long tournament.

So what deck could I choose? I had thought about going back to Gifts Storm as it had made a resurgence, but the bad spot Empty the Warrens was put in due to Batterskull and Plague Engineer, made the deck feel bad. Also in a mostly Jund, Death's Shadow, and UWx meta that we knew was prevalent in Europe, I didn't feel confident enough to sleeve my Electromancer and Barals.

I also had been thinking about playing Stoneblade, mostly hesitating between UW and Esper. Testing brought me closer to Esper as I wanted to include wraths in the deck, and Lingering Souls tended to play very well with Supreme Verdict and Swords. Also Plague Engineer was a card I loved, and found very versatile. The deck would most probably have been pure tempo-midrangey without cryptic command, but with a huge amount of control over the battlefield. However I wasn't confident in my ability to play the deck, and in a K-Command Meta, I wasnt so sure about my choice. The final nail in the coffin was testing: the deck felt very bad, and much too slow.

So then, what could I play? Well I didn't know. And it wasn't until the eve of my departure that I decide to sleeve up Grixis Death's Shadow again. After a few hours long call in the middle of the night with my teammates this is what I came up with.

As I didn't have Scalding Tarns, we decide to make due with a Verdant Catacomb and a Flooded strand. The basic Snow Lands were used to bluff being Whirza if needed be, and since I loved the Coldsnap arts it wasn't hard for me to let go of my Zendikar basics. The rest of the list is pretty stock for a turbo Gurmag list. I like the deck to be as streamlined as possible. I had considered K-Command in the main, but decided to forego it as it felt bad in the opening hand, was only shining in a few matchups, and it wasn't worth it in my opinion to de-streamline the deck for a few matchups that were improved only a little by the card.

The big inclusion that I'd like to talk about is Fiery Islet. My teammates were very skeptic about the card, and so were the few people that I talked online about it. Sure it was on Grixis colors, but :

A- It wasn't fetchable

B- It didn't produce B

My hardheadedness as well as Ari Zax's (look up @argzax on Twitter!) list which won the recent Modern Challenge finally convinced my teammates to let me try it out. It became my deck's MVP of the tournament. More refined control over my Life Points, an ability that becomes extra relevant in topdeck wars or in flooding situation, which I assumed would happen quite often in the grindy meta I was expecting. It was never a bad topdeck and since I always wanted at least two lands in most of my openers, it was never a bad card in the opener either.

As for the sideboard, the two big things are the inclusion of JtMS, and Seasoned Pyromancer (Spyro). I was skeptic about Jace at first, mostly due to his high CMC, and then somebody told me that: he dodged Celestial Purge as well as Decay which are two of Death's Shadow biggest hate pieces. Also in the white grindy matchups, the high CMC was often offset by the usage of Path to Exile. Moreover during a topdeck war, fatesealing the opponent is game winning. This completely converted me to playing Jace.

So in total I settled for 3 sideboard slots dedicated for grindy matchups: Liliana the Last Hope, who I love too much (maybe because she was the first planeswalker I bought with only Store Credit), Seasoned Pyromancer, and Jace the Mind Sculptor.

Probably in those matchups, Seasoned Pyromancer is the one I like the least, since all my other cards seem relevant at one point or another, and the average CMC of the deck gets higher postboard, meaning that I must tap-out more often with expensive cards in my hand.

However I only saw him in games where he was irrelevant because I had already gotten a huge lead by turn 3 which would transform into a win pretty quickly.

In the final flex slot I played Alpine Moon I really wanted insurance against Tron and Valakut had made a resurgence recently.

As for the tournament I went 5-3 personally, but the team went 3-5 overall in day 1, less than ideal to go over to day 2. Had I not misplayed in round 2 in the mirror, the day could have gone very differently. I had a commanding position, with a shadow on board, but more cards in hand than the opponent including K command, Snapcaster Mage and Stubborn Denial.

I had 3 lands on board including one fetch and was at 7 life as opposed to the opponents 6.

He had 2 cards in hand, which I deduced were not Stubborn, nor Street Wraith, with a Shadow and an Angler on board and no fetches. Had I waited I could have gained a commanding position being able to recur a threat and face him with bigger threats than he could propose against me. But I decided to go on the attack not seeing the obvious double block which put me at a huge disadvantage.

At the very least I now know to look out for double blocks. But I think that I'll make myself a reminder to look out for double blocks in the future.

As for resources I used, I mostly used Michael Rapp's (@RappaciousOne on Twitter, go follow him, go!, go!) guidelines article on ChannelFireball. He mostly made me rethink taking the draw vs the play in a lot of matchups. I was already a proponent of finding more matchups where taking the draw was more advantageous than the play.

I soon found out that in the grindy matchups, (UW stoneblade, Jund, the mirror) the draw was often more important than the play, the idea being that in a world where you can trade 1-for-1, or 2-for-1, the one with additional ressources, will be able to outgrind the opponent better. Notably UW stoneblade tends to play 3-4 Force of Negation and may go down to 1 or 2 post board, but still, the card stays in the deck.

Thus giving him the draw allows him to recoup the lost card more easily if he ever has to cast a FoN for the alternative cost, which is why I take the draw in the matchup. Also, you quickly recoup your lost turn, when the opponent Paths or Winds of Abandon you threat.

In the mirror, my opinion is that statistically our hands will be the same, and in a matchup were the one with the last threat wins, that also means that the one with the most resources wins meaning that I truly think that the draw is better than the play.

The only debatable grindy matchup to take the draw is Jund, there are advantages to playing both side.

On the play you can play a threat on turn 2 giving you and additional turn to answer a potential Liliana of the Veil and go under the abundance of threats the opponent has. On the draw though, you can get into the same situation where having the last threat standing, wins you the game. I think that this debate is closer to 50/50 than the other two, and I will do further testing for this inquiry.

Overall it feels good to be on GDS again, at Ghent I went 8-6 throughout the whole weekend. It still feels like there are a lot of things I have to learn or relearn (like double blocking is a thing), but it is part of the excitement that I'm feeling right now.

This won't mean, that I will give up on other decks though: Storm is still my favorite deck in Modern, and I am currently very keen on developing ANTS further.

But right now, it feels very good to be hurting myself.

See you next blog!