Gearing up for Adventure- Kurtis's Nats Report

I didn't grind in to nats this past weekend, but the trip was a lot of fun and I learned some things about the current standard and sealed formats. Read on for stories, decklists, and tales of trying to finish better than Ari Lax at the main event.


I didn't get to battle my Boros deck much during the week, but I got in some games against Jund and U/W with Kai and Matt on Tuesday and on the hotel the night before grinders and I figured out that I couldn't afford to have Sparkmage/Collar in the maindeck. So, I moved it to the board. Instead, Collar became another Gear (for Mystic), and I added an Elspeth and 3 Kor Hookmaster to the maindeck. Hookmaster isn't ever spectacular, but a lot of matchups come down to forcing through damage and that guy is a lot of tempo, not to mention that he can pick up an Adventuring Gear (gearing up for a big attack).

For reference, here's the list I played:

R/W Aggro | The Rusty Machete

23 Creatures: 
4 Goblin Guide
4 Steppe Lynx
4 Plated Geopede
2 Stoneforge Mystic
2 Goblin Bushwhacker
3 Kor Hookmaster
4 Ranger of Eos
12 Spells:
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Adventuring Gear
2 Elspeth, Knight Errant

25 Lands:
4 Marsh Flats
4 Arid Mesa
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Terramorphic Expanse
5 Mountain
5 Plains
1 Teetering Peaks

15 Sideboard:
4 Mark of Mutiny
1 Smoldering Spires
2 Ajani Vengeant
2 War Priest of Thune
1 Kor Skyfisher
4 Cunning Sparkmage
1 Basilisk Collar

The sideboard is pretty standard; I came up with the Mark of Mutiny upgrade (over Act of Treason) as well and the other cards help against control decks to have something to bring out path or bolt for (depending on if they have Baneslayer Angel). My record with this deck, across 3 grinders and 1 side event, was a very disappointing 7-5. By the end, I played loose and made a couple of misplays, but by and large I felt that (at least during grinders) I played fairly well.

I lost multiple games where I didn't draw a spell until turn 6 or 7 and a couple games where I kept two-land hands and just never drew a third land. I also lost a key game three where I mulliganed to four against U/R Runeflare Trap combo. Let's just say that starting the game with zero cards in hand is not a valid strat against that deck. I don't necessarily think that the deck is bad, per se, but it's not my style of deck and it is not as powerful as I thought it was.

Part of this is because you actually need to draw a very narrow land to spell ratio to win the game due to landfall creatures. I would estimate that, over your first 12 cards that you see, having at least 5 lands and at least 5 spells is usually going to be necessary in order to win. A simple computation yields those odds as just 61.23 percent. I'm aware that this does not take mulligans into account (both in that at six cards you would need to see at least 5 of each and in that the extreme end of the variance of seven card hands does not lead to an auto-loss because of mulliganing). I'm also aware that winning with four lands and killing them on four as well as just casting a Bolt or two and then a Ranger of Eos can sometimes win the game; the calculation is not meant to be in any way binding, it's just an observation to illustrate how comparatively susceptible this deck is to variance. An additional factor is that you don't have time to miss land drops or not play spells; since you have to be aggressive, it's not like you can afford to sit around and twiddle your thumbs while you wait for more lands or spells to show up.

That being said, the deck definitely has the capacity for very powerful draws, and sometimes if they can't kill your one-drop they're just going to be very dead very fast. Goblin Guide and Steppe Lynx are both powerful (though Goblin Guide giving them cards is more relevant with this list than you would think), and Geopede and Mystic are both legitimate threats that come down on turn two. (Mystic puts you into top gear. - K) Generally, any hand without one of those fourteen cards is an auto-mulligan, at least pre-board.

After dying in grinders, I was happy that a lot of my friends made it in, including Michael Servis, who battled sealed with a pool including Hoarding Dragon that could fetch Sword of Vengeance, Kai, who was gaming with a terrible Mythic list (much worse than Utter-Leyton's, in my view), and James Seelhoff, who was grinding with Jeremy Pinter's Valakut list. James managed to beat Naya through their Manabarbs multiple times (I'll take seven for Avenger, do you want to pay four for that Vengevine? Oh, and dome you for three with this mountain and... you're dead), which led me to suggest having that card in the Valakut deck's sideboard. For Nats, Kai was still on Mythic, three people were on Valakut, and Servis was on terrible R/U/G Monument, AKA the do-nothing special. Goldfishing the deck was actually vomit-inducing. However, he 7-1ed constructed (his list is on Wizards site, for those who are interested), meaning that there has to be something real about a deck whose opening hand is three Sea Gate Oracles, Frost Titan, Raging Ravine, Rootbound Crag, Forest (in reality I think he had a blue source, but still a clear mulligan).

I also had the pleasure to draft M11 multiple times both online and irl. You want to be a blue deck. Doesn't matter if the color is open or not, you want to be in blue. It's basically like ROE wherein blue and white are the strongest colors by such a gaping margin that it really is irrelevant what the people around you are drafting, you want to be in those colors. The only difference is that in M11 it's just blue that is the must-draft; white and black are the tier two colors, and red and green are tier three. All of the colors are playable, especially when paired with blue. The only exception to this rule is that it's possible to be a heavy black or heavy white deck that makes use of cards like Quag Sickness, Corrupt, Armored Ascension, White Knight, etc. The tier two colors are good enough that they can be drafted on their own if (and only if) the table is light on other drafters of those colors. A final note is that the R/B shenanigans deck is viable occasionally, and when it's real, it's pretty real, but when it sucks, it really sucks. There was also a very funny MODO draft where our opponent refused to split the finals, claiming that his deck was unbeatable, and then snap Mana Leaked our turn two Goblin Tunneler. Guess he just couldn't beat that one otherwise.

Not being in Nats afforded me the opportunity to dabble in M11 sealed for the PTQ. (Kurtis had to switch gears after his grinders - K)  Sealed is by far my worst format, having never done anything of note in the format ever in my entire life (except top 8 a fat pack battle). My pool was pretty mediocre. I had Triskelion and 9 playable white cards including two White Knights, Serra Angel, Blinding Mage, and Pacifism. From there, it was downhill. Black was unplayable (splash Royal Assassin?), red had two Bolts to make a splash for, green had some fixing but no real fat creatures aside from two Awakener Druids, and blue had an assortment of commons and an Air Servant. I built G/W/r thinking that the fixing would help on the splash, but I probably should have just played blue instead. As I commented about draft, you just want to be a blue deck in this format. Doesn't matter that you have no card advantage in the color and that you lose fixing for the Bolts and will have to raw-dog the red source. You just want to be a blue deck. Anyways, I finished 1-2, losing the first round to an aggressive W/B deck because he cast a Doom Blade both games whereas I had no real removal and losing the third round in game three when I had to bet he wouldn't draw Pyroclasm since time was running low, and, between Crystal Ball and hitting Strongbox on the first activation, he got it on the final turn possible for him to win. Kyle also fared poorly at the PTQ, so we got to sit around and watch Matt punt his way out of Top 8 by playing a match terribly and then dropping at x-2 when his breakers were good enough that he could have made it had he won the final round. (Must've ground your gears, eh? -K)

We also got to battle a team draft in which I tried to draft green, not an experience I will soon repeat- double Birds, double Cultivate, double Cudgel Troll still isn't strong enough. I got stuck on double green forever against LSV and decided to run out Troll since I had to make a play to get ahead; he obviously had the Doom Blade and my next draw was a Forest. Sometimes, if you're not in the right gear, you just run bad.

Bonus exercise: I open up the following hand against Jund on the play for game three with my Boros deck. My opponent, who is braindead, announces that he will mulligan before I have even looked at my hand for no reason. He is playing Vengevine and Thought Hemmorage against me post-board (later found out he boarded out his bolts because he didn't need the dome-age to win); the point is, do we mull or keep this seven? Goblin Guide, Goblin Guide, Lightning Bolt, Plated Geopede, Stoneforge Mystic, Ranger of Eos, Mountain I shipped after thinking, while Matt, who was watching my match, strongly disagreed with me. Of course, the top three cards of my deck were plains, mountain, fetchland, but that's not the point. What do you think?