Where's the Beef?

In my deck, that's where!

So yeah, I'm enjoying my Naya Midrange deck, which I've been alternately titling "Domri'z Doodz," or "Where's the Beef?" Because, you know, the deck has lots of beefy doodz. Anyway, here's where I'm at now:

Land (24):
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Temple Garden
4 Stomping Ground
4 Forest
2 Mountain
3 Temple of Abandon
3 Temple of Triumph

Doodz (25):
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Loxodon Smiter
2 Boon Satyr
3 Polukranos, World-Eater
3 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Aurelia, the Warleader

Spells (11):
1 Chained to the Rocks
2 Mizzium Mortars
3 Magma Jet
3 Domri Rade
2 Chandra, Pyromaster

Sideboard (15):
4 Boros Reckoner
2 Wear // Tear
3 Mistcutter Hydra
2 Assemble the Legion
1 Hammer of Purphoros
3 Boros Charm

And here's how the matches went!

My brambles are no longer as concerned on turn 5 after I've already dropped 15 power on the board.

Round 1: vs. Gruul LD. Well, I give the guy credit for trying. But there's a reason why LD isn't good right now. When you're spending your resources to try to start blowing up lands on turn 3 or 4, and I'm dropping 4/4 elephants a turn or two sooner .... yeah. It didn't really end well for him. Win, 2-0. Record: 1-0.

Obey your master.

Round 2: vs. Mono-Blue Devotion. I was on the ropes for most of this match. Game one, he was poking at me with Nightveil Specters, stealing my lands, while I struggled to get a board presence. But then I landed a Stormbreath Dragon to hold them at bay while he started flooding out. Games two and three, he hit Thassa and/or Master of Waves early and often and I couldn't keep up. I think I need to tighten this matchup up a little bit. Loss, 1-2. Record: 1-1.

Awkward combat math combined with a threatening clock.

Round 3: vs. Boros. I played against a friend and new Level 1 Judge. This matchup seems pretty good for me, though. He didn't get great aggro draws, and my doodz quickly and thoroughly outclassed his. I was struck once again how swingy Boros Reckoner can be. In matchups where he's not as good, he's really not that good. But in matchups where he is good, he's one of the best cards in my deck. Also, Aurelia can finish a game nicely once I get a couple of beefy doodz out. It was also somewhat satisfying to scry a Domri to the bottom of my library after he got Pith'd. Win, 2-0. Record: 2-1.

I'm still not entirely sure how I'm supposed to chain this to the rocks.

Round 4: vs. Mono-Green Devotion. Piloted by a kid who's the younger brother of another regular at the store. But he's starting to come into his own, and he's been doing farely well lately. I was happy to meet him in the 2-1 bracket. Unfortunately, the actual match wasn't that exciting. We went to three games, where each game was decided on who got the biggest beefy dood out first. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't satisfying to finish the game by Chaining Nylea to the Rocks, and subsequently Mortars'ing his board before swinging for way more than lethal. Win, 2-1. Record: 3-1.

So yeah, I'm back above .500! Well, at least for this week.

Some thoughts on the deck:

• I hate to say it, but Stormbreath Dragon hasn't really been exciting me that much. He's decent, but rarely awesome. It's nice having a 4/4 hasty evasion dood, but ... sometimes I feel like it's just an expensive Loxodon Smiter. I wonder if I could cut down to two of him.
• I feel like I need a little more removal. I'm starting to think that the Magma Jets might should be Thunder Strikes. Too many times, I had a Jet, but my opponent had a 3-toughness dood that I wanted to off. But ... scry. :(
• Domri continues to impress. Most of the time (if not all the time), he was just a kill spell, or cycled, and absorbed some burn or beats. But for 3 mana, that's not horrible. I was pretty reckless and impatient with him, though, too. If I would have either played him after playing a dood to protect him, or played him and not swung with one of my other doodz, I could have gotten more value out of him. Either way, great card. I might consider going up to 4.
• I didn't get a chance to use Chandra much. She impressed me a lot in testing, but she didn't really come up all that often. She did pick off a couple of 1-toughness doodz, and she cleared the way for my one game win in the mono-blue matchup. But ... yeah. I'll keep my eye on her and see how she performs.
• I'm realizing one of the keys to this deck is tempo. I hit oversized doodz on curve and beat face. To that end, I feel like maybe I could work in an Advent of the Wurm somewhere. 5/5 flash for 4 mana seems good.
• I'm not really sure about Boon Satyr. I like the idea of having a 4-power flash, but I never really wanted to do the Bestow, and the flash wasn't really that relevant. A potential cut.

So yeah, I have a few things I could tweak with this deck to tighten it up a little more. I'm enjoying it, so I think I'll keep rocking it for now. Yay Magic. :)

On the Judging front, I went to a nice Judge Conference in the Twin Cities a couple weeks ago. That was pretty cool. Lots of great seminars, some good networking, some sweet Judge foils, and a nice presentation from our Regional Coordinator. Yay, Midwest. :)

And I'm continuing to be pushed towards Level 2. I think I'm ready. I just want to tighten up my rules knowledge a little bit more in preparation for the exam. And I gotta head judge a Competitive event. We might be able to just run a random Tuesday event at Competitive and let me do that. That's kinda cheesy, though. I'd rather do an actual bigger event. But whatever. I just wanna get 'er done at this point.

Yay. :)

Next Stop: Naya

Good morning everybody!

So I've been pretty busy lately, and oddly, I haven't gotten to play much actual Magic. I've been doing a lot of Judge Duty. But over the last few days I've gotten to play some, which is pretty cool.

I helped out at Gamehole Con, a great new local tabletop gaming convention, with a focus on "old school gaming" (e.g., Ernie Gygax, Gary's son, who was involved in the early days of D&D, was there to run some first-edition campaigns). We were supposed to be running a pair of 32-man tournaments, for Standard and Legacy, but very few people showed any interest in it. So we ran some Pack Wars and some Drafts. I ended up playing in one of each, and I actually had a lot of fun.

The way we did Pack Wars was a little weird, though. For subsequent rounds, we just shuffled the second (and third) packs in, without tweaking anything (including the number of lands). So a lot of it was dependent on hitting land drops. So in that respect, my MVPs were my scry land and the pair of Traveler's Amulets. I ended up winning the whole thing, which was pretty rad.

The Draft was a 6-man affair, and I had a pretty fun black/red deck packed with removal and some light devotion aspects. My all-star, by far, was Whip of Erebos. Card is insane in Limited. Racing me was almost impossible. I ended up going 1-1 before dropping because I had to get going. But the format seems like fun, and I'd like to try it again sometime.

So, hey, I got a new Standard deck. Finally! I settled on Naya Midrange, and my deck looked kinda like this:

Land:
4 Temple Garden
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Stomping Ground
4 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Temple of Triumph
3 Temple of Abandon

Creatures:
4 Elvish Mystic
4 Sylvan Caryatid
1 Scavenging Ooze
4 Voice of Resurgence
4 Loxodon Smiter
3 Polukranos, World Eater
1 Ghor-Clan Rampager
3 Stormbreath Dragon
1 Aurelia, the Warleader

Spells:
2 Chained to the Rocks
2 Mizzium Mortars
1 Hammer of Purphoros
3 Domri Rade
1 Chandra, Pyromaster
1 Xenagos, the Reveler
1 Warleader's Helix
1 Assemble the Legion

Sideboard:
2 Wear // Tear
4 Boros Reckoner
1 Assemble the Legion
3 Mistcutter Hydra
1 Primeval Bounty
3 Boros Charm

And here's how it went:

Round 1: vs. Boros Devotion. A recent runner-up deck. Kind of a RDW kinda deck, but focusing on Devotion for reach (Fanatic of Mogis). White was a splash for stuff like Chained to the Rocks, and I think some other random creature. We played three fun, really close games. The match really could have gone either way, but in game three he got stuck in topdeck mode, looking for a Fanatic or a Dragon that couldn't quite find its way to his hand. So I had to go on the offensive and try to get there as fast as I could. Which I did. I won, but could have easily lost in an alternate universe. Win, 2-1. Record: 1-0.

Round 2: vs. 3-Color White Weenie. Huh? Well, it's mostly white weenie, but with a blue splash for Rapid Hybridization, and a red splash for a couple of doodz and I think a couple of spells. Unfortunately for me, Soldier of the Pantheon is really hard to deal with. Most of my early creatures are multicolored, and when buffed by Spear of Heliod, Caryatid can't hold the fort. Then by the time I can get Polukranos online, he's ready to Brave the Elements. Tough loss. Loss, 0-2. Record: 1-1.

Round 3: vs. Bant Control. Pretty cool brew, but it seemed like he couldn't really get much going, or even slow me down that much. I played doodz, he Jace'd, he Verdict'd, I played more doodz, ultimate'd Domri, and he died. Second game, I played a couple of planeswalkers and had the Boros Charm when he tried to Ratchet Bomb them. Win, 2-0. Record: 2-1.

Round 4: vs. Boros White Weenie. Mostly the same deck as round 2, but without the blue splash. It played out similarly, though I did win the first game pretty easily by curving out into all my monsters. Loss, 1-2. Record: 2-2.

My round 2 opponent went on to 4-0, and so I had pretty good tiebreakers. Good enough for 11th place, and 4 booster packs. The best pull from them was a foil Anger of the Gods. Pretty sweet. :) But more importantly: I'm winning again! That felt pretty good. However, the deck is pretty flawed, and I'm not certain how much I'm actually going to play it. Here are some thoughts:

• The mana is really, really awkward. Curving out is darn near impossible, with so many ETBT lands, mono-green acceleration. There were way too many games where I didn't have much to play out until turn 3.
• Along those lines, I need to revisit my removal suite. I need more early removal. Helix is a great swing, but at 4 mana, it's not terribly practical. At that point, I want to be deploying monsters, not burning random weenies. I think I probably want something like Shock or Thunder Strike or Magma Jet for that purpose. Chained to the Rocks was pretty sweet, but I wasn't nearly as likely to have a Mountain in play at any given point as when I was playing B/W/R. Probably a good spicy one-of.
• Some of the maindeck singletons were cute, but not terribly effective. I love Hammer, but it's not really what I want to be doing maindeck. I'm moving it back to the 'board. Assemble was the same kinda thing. I always wanted to deploy a Dragon or a Hydra instead of a slow enchantment.
• Chandra was excellent. I only got her out once, but she killed a mana dork, and drew like 3 cards. I think I'm gonna splurge for a second one. She'll kill Soldier of the Pantheon, that's for sure. Her Falter effect could help me tempo out an alpha strike, too.
• Xenagos wasn't that exciting. The hasty Satyrs were fine against the Control deck, but again, I'd rather deploy a monster.
• I was impressed with Voice of Resurgence. I was fine just chump blocking with them, and letting the Elementals they left behind loom threateningly on board. The Elementals make mana dorks not-terrible topdecks, too.
• Domri was pretty awesome, too. He mostly drew cards, but he did instigate a fight that helped swing the board state in my favor. I'd consider a fourth, if I wasn't terrified of having multiples stuck in my hand. And the interaction with the scry lands was very cute, and actually pretty good.
• I'm pretty happy with my suite of beefy doodz. Smiter is a huge undercosted body that clogs up the board like a boss. Ditto with Polukranos. Stormbreath Dragon, with its hastiness, was a great way to set up alpha strikes.
• I was thinking about the possibility of going Jund, because black gives me access to Thoughtseize and lots of great removal, but giving up white means giving up some great creatures like Smiter and Voice. Part of the reason I wanted to play Naya was for beef, though, so I think I'll stick with Naya for now. Plus, we're missing two of the color combinations for scry lands. So .. yeah.

Yeah, I like the deck. I think I can make some tweaks, tighten it up, get some better game against Aggro, and we'll see how it goes. :)

Thanks for reading!