MTG Standard Deck: RG Dinosaurs

This is the deck I have been brewing/playing for the past 10 days or so in the current Standard format. The idea was to come up with a deck which would have good game against both Esper Dragons and Red Aggro. Basically, I've combined the Deathmist Raptor/Den Protector Engine with a RG Dragons shell, and added Goblin Rabblemaster, giving it an aggressive bent, with a "Bees" package out of the sideboard for decks with lots of ground creatures. The following is a list with which I 4-0d a daily event on MTGO last Saturday:

24 Land:
8 Forest
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
5 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Temple of Abandon
2 Rugged Highlands

2 Instant:
2 Lightning Strike

1 Planeswalker:
1 Chandra, Pyromaster

33 Creature:
1 Elvish Mystic
3 Avatar of the Resolute
4 Scaleguard Sentinels
4 Den Protector
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
1 Boon Satyr
3 Courser of Kruphix
4 Deathmist Raptor
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Thunderbreak Regent
3 Stormbreath Dragon

Sideboard:
2 Roast
2 Scouring Sands
1 Heir of the Wilds
1 Setessan Tactics
4 Hornet Nest
1 Boon Satyr
1 Collected Company
2 Destructive Revelry
1 Tormod's Crypt



 Since then I've made some updates:

24 Land:
8 Forest
1 Haven of the Spirit Dragon
4 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Temple of Abandon
3 Rugged Highlands

3 Instant:
3 Draconic Roar

1 Planeswalker:
1 Chandra, Pyromaster

32 Creature:
1 Heir of the Wilds
3 Avatar of the Resolute
4 Scaleguard Sentinels
4 Den Protector
4 Goblin Rabblemaster
3 Courser of Kruphix
4 Deathmist Raptor
2 Ashcloud Phoenix
4 Thunderbreak Regent
3 Stormbreath Dragon

Sideboard:
3 Roast
1 Scouring Sands
1 Setessan Tactics
4 Hornet Nest
2 Boon Satyr
1 Collected Company
2 Destructive Revelry
1 Harness by Force


I think I achieved my goal of having good matchups vs Red and Control, though I do think I have an unfavourable matchup vs the other big deck in the format, Abzan Aggro. The deck is still a work in progress, and I hope to go in some more depth soon.

A Tale of Traps

Game Log

Setup:

First of all, I want to say I don't actually think this game was played particularly well, by any stretch, by either player. Indeed, the reason I'm posting this is that there were a number of errors being made which I see as fairly common even for players who are pretty strong. As such, I'm going to refrain from posting any images here which would show my opponent's name, as the point really isn't to shame him, but rather to try to point out these pitfalls so that you, the reader, will be able to avoid them. Obviously, you can figure out who it is if you really want to.

Trap 1: University
The University trap is very easy to fall into. There are lots of good and shiny 5-cost cards, and you want lots of them, so you go for it. The problem is, this is incredibly slow. You have to buy a Potion, buy a University, and only then can you start getting those 5s to pour in. A player who just went straightforwardly for buying those 5s the old-fashioned way is just going to be 5s ahead for several shuffles, and particularly if those 5s have an effect of improving your deck's ability to build itself (as is often true), perhaps just indefinitely. On top of this, as a village, University is a Necropolis - and that's card-negative, generally not where you want to be. Given all this, in order to make University worth it, you usually want some plan to make the game go late (often extra points) and/or ways to see those reshuffles quickly (i.e. deck-thinning). You do have some of that here (Tunnel and Island give more points, Spice Merchant thins a bit, Embassy and Margrave can help you draw). But the draw is pretty weak - only Margrave can combine with University to actually increase your hand-size, and then you are not doing it in a very potent way - the draw power is equivalent to Village-Moat. Yeah. So I really don't believe in University or the Engine here.

Trap 2: Opening Potion
This trap is a bit tough, and perhaps I shouldn't call it a trap, because it's very often correct. The thought is 'if I want cards that cost 2p or 3p, I should open potion'. And because you typically want those cards as soon as possible, this is indeed most of the time correct. But there are lots of exceptions. And I think this is likely one of those exceptions - if you want to go for the engine, I think you want to open Spice Merchant and defer those Universities for a while, as getting your deck thinned and spinning a bit is more important than loading up on those 5-costs super-fast (and indeed, you aren't so much slower anyway, as you are more likely to be able to just buy some 5s). A good example of delayed potion happened in a game this morning on Adam Horton's stream which can be found here.

Trap 3: Tunnel
People often like to rush for Tunnel+Enabler, thinking they'll gain lots of golds and get way ahead. This can sometimes be good, but generally it's quite mediocre, even with fairly decent enablers. More importantly, in doing this, you're playing a deck that is more like a slog than anything else - it takes an awful long time for you to get a decent number of golds out of this, and in the meantime, you have added a nothing card to your deck (and this is even assuming you do hit your collisions pretty well). In the long run, you do have a gold-heavy, fairly robust deck, and some extra points to boot. So it is generally like a slog, and not necessarily a great one. Of course, there are other ways to play the card. What doesn't make sense, though, is trying to get this to work in an engine. You're adding lots of non-draw cards to your deck, which makes it exceptionally difficult to draw your deck. Of course, the enablers usually sift you, so you may well still be able to have some ability to draw your important cards, but the point still remains that as you increase the number of cards you have in your deck, you decrease the chances of getting everything you need to come together. In this game, your draw isn't great, and especially given your few villages and mostly needing Embassy over Margrave to enable, you're eventually turning yourself into something near Province-per-turn mode. And keep in mind, you were pretty slow to get there. This really lowers your ability to reap the benefits of an engine.

Trap 4: One Copper Trasher
I have to give credit here for pointing this one out to Stef, the longtime top player in the game. Here's the deal: usually, you only want one copy of a copper trasher (Moneylender or especially Spice Merchant, as here). This is because you're going to run out of fuel for them fairly quickly, and there's diminishing returns on these cards, as you get to trash a lot fewer cards per trasher with each successive one. However, in games where there is some trash-for-benefit card, getting the second one gets much, much better, and is very often the thing you want to do. Here, I was the player who overlooked this: I slam lots of silvers and only one Spice Merchant. This is fine, but given my Butcher strategy, getting the second SM just seems a good bit better.



As for how the actual board goes? Well, in the game, my SM+2 Butchers was fine enought o overcome the wonky kind-of-engine from my opponent. In general, though, I am not sure which way to turn between Margrave-based BM, Embassy-based BM (picking up tunnels at the right moment), or 2SM+1-3Butcher BM.

Know Your Basics #1: Ironworks Rush

Game Log

Setup:

...with Shelters.


Despite the Shelters and the Colonies, this game has to be an Ironworks/Silk Road rush. The problem is, there just isn't anything else to do. You can play for Stables, but this is just too slow. And you can play for a mix of that with Herald, but lowering the Herald pile actually speeds the Rush up even more than you in that case (as the Rush player is pretty happy with Heralds, but really really happy with the easily-empty-able pile). Adding Doctor to your Stables engine doesn't help too much on average (though I guess you can give it a whirl on 5/2 exactly - I don't *think* it's enough even there). It helps a Herald engine a good bit more, as those cards work synergystically, but again, the Herald engine just has NO time, and you have to look to Navigator as your payload or give in and get Platinum anyway.

In the actual game, my opponent goes for Doctor/Ironworks into... some kind of Herald thing where he prefers Golds to Stables for a while. I flounder around a bit trying to keep my options open and figure out what he's doing, oscillating a bit between playing to be able to go a bit long (probably close to just being wrong) with some Duchies and just ramming home the piles. In any case, I am able to close it out on turn 14, and it wasn't as close as the 32-10 final score would make it look.

In cases like this, it's important to note that the Rush player is going to have both the point lead and all the control over how the game is being steered, and that is not something you want to go up against - you need a LOT of raw power to overcome it.

Anyway, it's important to know a few of these basic concepts, like a rush, not so much because they will always be right (it took the rest of the board being fairly weak here, given the Shelters and Colonies), but because you need to have some plan that doesn't just roll over to them.

Instructional Game #4 Clean, Clear Subtleties

Game Log

Setup:

The first thing that jumps out at me here is Ironworks/Highway. Of course, in retrospect, there isn't that much support for it. In order for that to be a key or even significant part of your strategy, you need to be drawing good chunks of your deck pretty reliably. The only draw here is Torturer (a terminal with no village) and Vagrant (which doesn't help get the components together). The other way you can get to drawing that much is by thinning, but the only thinning is Counterfeit. It's possible to try to get Counterfeit to work, but it's pretty slow - and your opponent probably WILL be contesting you on Highways. So at best, that's a friendly interaction that can come up.

My opponent - again, a strong player - opened Ironworks/Silver. I actually think this is just a mistake here. Counterfeit/Highway probably should be a pretty central part of your plan, because Counterfeit thins and gives buys, and Highway leverages that pretty nicely. Perhaps more important, if you let one player get too many Highways, they might actually be able to do some pretty degenerate things. In any case, the important thing to note is that 5s are key. And Ironworks here, without a Highway in play, pretty much just grabs Silver. Now Silver is probably a reasonable card on this board, but here's where we look at the percentages: Silver/Silver is about 91% to hit at least one 5, including about 15% to get two. Ironworks/Silver is about 73% to get at least one 5, including about 1% to get two. Furthermore, if you use IW to grab a Silver in order to hit your $5, then you're not up anything over what Silver/Silver would have done unless you hit that 1% (in which case you've got an extra Ironworks). So where your real advantage lies, after the second shuffle, is in that, if you miss with your Ironworks hand in a way that you hit exactly $3 after gaining Silver, you end up with an extra Silver after that shuffle. (There's also some weird cases where your Ironworks misses the shuffle and then collides well, but these are really really fringe, and require getting Highway before Ironworks, and I really don't think you can bank on that). I in no way believe that that extra Silver can compensate for the lowered chance at hitting 5s. This thought process is what was going through my mind (not the exact percentages, mind, just the generalities) when I deferred my Ironworks until later - I want it to gain 5s, it can't do that soon, so I'd rather start my decks rolling.

Okay, so the game proceeds such that he does actually get that Ironworks leading him to $3, also hitting $5 on the other turn, equal spot, so that after the 4th turn, he straight up has an extra Ironworks compared to me. But the next shuffle is unkind to him (at this point, our shuffles become highly uncoupled due to the differing number of cards in our decks). By the end of turn 7, our decks look like this:

I have an extra Counterfeit. He has an extra Silver, Copper, and Ironworks. It looks at first blush that I might be a little ahead. But looks can be misleading - this advantage is already quite large, and he's going to need some good draws (more realistically, for me to have bad draws) in order to come back.

Over the next four turns, we can see how easy it is for an advantage like this to snowball: My deck is slightly trimmer, more efficient, and this compounds in on itself to get even sleeker (the extra Counterfeit is very nice for this as well), while picking up significant payload in a non-fattening way: the Card-neutral Highway. Thus, by turn 11, we are looking at:

I want to point out that my opponent has, given his situation, played very well here over the past few turns! His deck has lots of high-quality treasures and is set up like a quite decent Big Money deck ready for a healthy greening phase. Of course, the sleekness of my deck *ought* to leave me ahead here, but... over the next few turns, I play rather badly: I get a third Counterfeit (which I cannot support), and load up on Vagrants over Silvers. This is based on me still thinking of getting nice Highway chains capped off by Ironworks, but this is really an unrealistic pipe dream. My opponent keeps playing cleanly and hangs in the game the whole time. I make just one more good play, buying an Estate for effective $4 on turn 15 with 4 Provinces left - I am at the top of a shuffle and know I will never meaningfully see the next one, and given that the score is at all close, the point is absolutely worth it. Fortunately for me, my big early lead combines with a touch of first player advantage to overcome my later attempts to throw the game away, and I win on the 17th turn of the game.

Card Studies: Governor #1

One of the things I would like to do on the blog is take more in-depth looks at certain cards. This is probably based more about what I'm learning myself (and I feel like it's fairly often that I will 'level up' on a card) than on what I feel like I have some kind of mastery over. Anyway, I'd like to do this by looking at some game logs I think are instructive, one-at-a-time and then hopefully with some compilation pages for those different key cards. Over time, we can hopefully build up a pretty good repository.

Anyway, I'm going to start with Governor, which is a card I didn't feel like I had a very good feel for only a short time ago, but which I feel I've made a huge leap forward with in order to get to... mediocre with it.



Game Log

Setup:

Some notes on the opening here: Looking at it now, I kind of like double Silver. Priority number one is to get Governors ASAP. It's also somewhat important, though, to ease your burden in drawing through your deck. I actually don't think that's super important, but it's nice if you can get it done.

I actually opened Wishing Well/Silver, but I think that's not the greatest, since I want to be able to multi-Governor quickly. Buying multiple Governors in a shuffle is going to be facilitated by getting the second silver, and the Wishing well cycles you to playing those Governors faster, it's true, but not by THAT much. The other thing to note is that Governor trashing a 3 into a Governor can be a real way of upping your Governor count fast, but if that silver is such a huge part of your economic output, that becomes less of a possibility. I get a second Silver on turn 4, which I need to do at some point, but I think it's just better to do this sooner rather than later.

My opponent went for a Loan, which is the other thing to consider here, but I don't really like it. You have to get treasures at some point fairly soon, and you take a pretty significant hit to your chances to hit 5 - I don't think the bit of trashing is worth it. And specifically he pairs it with Wishing Well, which I like even less, as it will crimp is ability to Governor up reliably. Of course, in this case, it works out okay, as he gets a 3/5, which puts him 'in the game', but I don't think the reward for this justifies the 25-30% (not an exact number) of the time you are WAY behind.


As the game progresses, I get more Wishing Wells, and he gets quite a bit more in the way of actions.

He gets a huge turn 9, which lets him triple Governor and win the split 6-4. I gain a couple Golds and buy a Province (trashing Hovel) on my own 9th turn. I think the most critical turn of the game is turn 10: My opponent draws a lot of cards and then... does nothing but build a lot. He gets a Prince, two Embassies, a Storeroom, and a Throne Room. The problem with this is that it just doesn't work very well in the style of Governor. At the end of it all, he only has $8 in his deck (Storeroom notwithstanding), including just one Silver and one Gold. Of course, all this building would be great in a lot of situations, but with Governor around, he is simply not going to have the time with those cards in his deck for it to pay off.

On my turn 10, I only have to use one Governor for draw, and I'm still able to double Province and pick up an Expand (which has a little bit of extra value here by virtue of its $7 cost - can be defensively upgraded into Province).

My opponent's turn 11 he really goes off with his engine, but in the end, he picks up no points, and another Prince. And he's drawn me 4 cards in the process. This lets me choose my time and 'go for it', double Provincing while using Expand to mill another. This gets us to this point:

And while I don't technically have 50% of the VP here, it really is a hard lock - he needs the last Province and 7 Duchies, which will take him a couple turns at least - and in the meantime, I will get some more points, which means he'll need basically all the rest of the estates, which will simply take him too long.



Takeaway:
Governor games end quickly - don't spend too long building.
Winning the split is big, but having an eye on what to do afterwards is also important.
Be cognizant of when you need to start greening - it's usually pretty quickly.