If you can't beat it, play it...

Hi everybody!

So .. . Tired of losing to Reanimator in Standard for the umpteenth time since it first became a thing last year, I figured it was time. If you can't beat it, play it. I realized that I had most of the cards of the winning list from the latest Star City Games Open, so I sleeved it up and gave it a whirl at last night's Win A Box at Mox Mania. Here's what I played, give or take a few cards:

Land (23):
4 Forest
4 Temple Garden
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Sunpetal Grove
2 Woodland Cemetery
2 Godless Shrine
3 Isolated Chapel
2 Gavony Township

Creatures (26):
4 Arbor Elf
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
3 Fiend Hunter
1 Sin Collector
1 Loxodon Smiter
4 Restoration Angel
3 Thragtusk
2 Acidic Slime
1 Obzedat, Ghost Council
3 Angel of Serenity

Spells (11):
4 Grisly Salvage
3 Mulch
4 Unburial Rites

Sideboard (15):
1 Loxodon Smiter
2 Acidic Slime
1 Obzedat, Ghost Council
1 Voice of Resurgence
2 Sin Collector
1 Garruk Relentless
1 Sever the Bloodline
2 Abrupt Decay
2 Rhox Faithmender
1 Thragtusk
1 Deathrite Shaman (I think?)

I made a few tweaks from the winning list. I figured the meta at Tuesday Night was going to be a bit more skewed towards Aggro than Midrange/Control than the SCG field. I figured Cavern wasn't as necessary, so I figured some more late-game reach could be good--turning my mana dorks into actual threats. I wanted to have a little more game against Aggro, so I figured a beefy Elephant blocker (that doesn't die to Searing Spear) would be better than a frail Duress-on-a-stick. And I like Obzedat, so I figured I'd try him out maindeck. Anyway, here's how things went:

Am I dead?

Round 1: vs. Humanimator. I lost to this deck last week with my Esper Control deck. I was able to take take one game on the back of an unanswered Rest in Peace, but he was able to combo off quickly the other two games. Well this week was different only in that I didn't have Rest in Peace. So, I lost in two. I talked to some other players, and the consensus seems to be that Crypt Incursion could be a good black one-sided answer to Reanimator decks. I think I'm gonna try that next time. Loss 0-2. Record: 0-1.

They linger .. and linger ...

Round 2: vs. W/B/R Tokens. Okay, I didn't really know what he was doing at first. I saw W/B/R colors and a turn-two Cartel Aristocrat, so I figured Aristocrats. So I Fiend Hunted her as soon as I could and tried to brace myself for Skirsdag High Priests and other annoying things. But ... it was mostly just Spirit tokens. Then it dawned on me during game two: it's a tokens deck. Oh, okay. In that game, it got pretty hairy. He Stab Wound'd my Angel of Serenity (whatttt), and started chump blocking everything with tokens. Then making more tokens. Then Assembling the proverbial Legion. Then he Stab Wound'd my Angel *again*. D: I was probably one turn away from death, but I was able to toss out enough mana dorks and Township them to get in for lethal the turn before I bled to death. Scary. Kinda wish I hadn't sided out my Slimes, but .. hey, I didn't know what I was playing against. But either way I won, so I'm not really complaining. Win 2-0. Record: 1-1.

LOLOL!!!1!

Round 3: vs. Jund. Okay, let's see how this goes! Game one was pretty sketchy. I had a slow start, and he was beating me down pretty steadily and growing his army. He had a couple of Huntmasters out, some Woof tokens, and I think Olivia. I was able to Salvage and/or Mulch into a Rites > Serenity, followed by a hard-cast Angel a turn or two later, and I was able to stabilize. He was still threatening lethal with a Wolf Run, though, so I couldn't really go on the offensive. I drew into an Acidic Slime and two Restoration Angels, so I went on the LD plan. I killed his two Wolf Runs, leaving him with just two shocklands and an Arbor Elf. He was able to kill one or both of my Angels to get a few of his creatures back, but by that point, I had developed a pretty decent army myself, and it was too late. I realized after I did it, I should have hit the shocklands with the Slimes, leaving him with an Arbor Elf and a Wolf Run and unable to cast anything. Jerkish, sure, but you gotta win, right? The other game was much less uneventful, with one of the keys being a Sire of Insanity (love this card!) putting us into stalemate/topdeck mode. I was the first one to break it. I got rid of his Sire somehow (Angel? Fiend Hunter? I forget), and I was able to win pretty quickly afterwards. Win 2-0. Record: 2-1.

Speed bump.

Round 4: vs. Esper Control. I went on the "slow and steady" plan, playing a turn-two Loxodon Smiter and bonking him for a few every turn. Eventually, he stabilized with a Verdict (or something), and started Sphinx'ing. Okay, let the grind begin! So I'd play out a threat, he'd deal with it, I'd reanimate a thingy, he'd deal with it, etc. In the meantime, my hand and graveyard were nice and full of threats and Rites, and he was blowing through answers. He stuck a Sorin, and his life total started creeping up and he started Drowning me, but eventually he ran out of answers, and I stuck an Obzedat. I had a Fiend Hunter for his chump blocker, and he failed to find an answer for an attacking Obzedat with him at 6 life and me with Township mana up. Game two, he mulled to 5, didn't like what he saw, and just scooped on the spot. He flashed me what he had, and it didn't look terrible to me, but I didn't see exactly everything he had. I looked at what my draws would have been, and it wouldn't have been that great. I would have liked to play it out, but apparently he didn't? I don't know. Well, it's a win! Win 2-0. Record: 3-1.

I had decent tiebreakers, so that was good enough for 4th place, and 7 prize packs. Not bad!

I like the deck. It's definitely different than what I'm used to, and it's good to shake things up. Turning d00dz sideways .. what a concept! It's pretty cool, though. The deck is one of those things that just feels smooth and powerful. I wonder if this is what driving a sports car is like? But I could feel the deck doing its thing, just by making plays here or there. It was like the deck becomes a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and takes on a life of its own. Even though I wasn't playing the deck optimally by any stretch of the imagination (e.g., I would unnecessarily goof up my sequence of land drops and mana dorks such that I was unable to cast Grisly Salvage until turn 3), it still ran very well.

Some of the tweaks I did I think were good, but I probably need to tighten it up. In control decks, when you're drawing a ton of cards, you can get away with having a few random 1- or 2-ofs that you don't expect to hit until late game, but in a deck that depends on doing more things earlier, I probably don't have this luxury. For example, if I want to hit Smiter  (and I do), he needs to be a 3- or 4-of.

Also, I don't really need to have too much hate in my 'board against Control. The deck already performs very well against them out of the box, so I don't really need to tweak it any more. Once I get Rites and/or Serenity shenanigans going, it's just a matter of keeping pressure on (and Drownyard/Jace off).

So yeah. Cool deck. A+++ would play again. I'll do some more tweaking of it, test it out, and see how it goes moving forward.

In other news, I'm Judging at the PTQ at Misty Mountain this weekend. I'm pretty excited, but also a little nervous. I'm a little sketchy on some of the details in the IPG .. like what exceptions there are to each item, and what some of the fixes are. I'll do some more cramming, and I think I'll be okay.

Talking to the L2 Head Judge of the event, he brought up something interesting that's likely to come up. Turn // Burn and Falkenrath Aristocrat. You have an Aristocrat and a dood. I cast Turn & Burn, fused, targeting your Aristocrat with both halves. In response, you sac a dood. What happens? Well, this is a textbook example indestructibility: It's not an ability, so Turn doesn't affect it. The Aristocrat lives. That's fine ... but ... what if players start trying to use this knowledge as a competitive advantage? So in the same scenario, if I know the rule, but you don't, and you put the Aristocrat in the graveyard assuming it's dead ... Well, then that's me knowingly allowing you to commit a Game Rule Violation, which then becomes a textbook example of Cheating. Then bad things happen. So ... Yeah, that was a heads-up given to me.

Well ... not much else to report at this time. As always, thanks for reading!