Lat weekend I participated in the Blue Elemelbourne
Blasters vs. Blood Moon Squad grudge match tournament at General Games Malvern.
The tournament was a blast and a highlight was everyone
getting to be on camera once for a feature match with commentary and a live
stream.
My feature match was the Grixis Control mirror against
Jacob McCormack who while the youngest player in the room has had reasonable
success with the deck and who I have lost to in the mirror on multiple
occasions before.
The full match with commentary can be found here for your
viewing pleasure:
The commentary for the match was a lot of fun and overall
good but because of the super casual nature of the event did not focus on the
technical intricacies of the match that were actually quite interesting and
highlighted some key aspects on the deck and the mirror.
In light of that, I decided to write up a run down from
my perspective so here it is.
The Lists
The lists are obviously similar (8 cards different in the
main, 6 in the board) but there are a few key differences.
The main 2 are that I moved my discard spells for the
event to the sideboard, I correctly expected to face zero combo decks, and was
playing a Strip Mine as my 7th point with a Crucible of Worlds to go with
it. This was largely untested but I knew
I didn’t want Force of Will, again no combo, and didn’t want to just play 6
points which was the option Michael Billinghurst went with in his Grixis list.
Jacob is also playing a Fiery Islet in the mana base and
a God-Eternal Kefnet as a 4 drop over Fact or Fiction in my list.
While certainly minor, a lot of these choices came up in
our match.
Game One
My hand here is not good and if you were to say keeping
was a mistake, you might be right. It’s
land heavy and has Liliana the Last Hope and Crucible of Worlds in it, neither
of which you want early in the mirror.
However, it also has Ancestral Vision in it and I’m on
the play so I keep and hope to leverage late game card advantage.
On turn 3 I cast Hymn to Tourach to which my opponent
responds with a no value Brainstorm (no fetch in play) which I’m honestly pretty
happy to see as while he may get to protect his best cards, Brainstorm is very
likely to be his best card anyway or would at least help him to dig to good
cards after the hymn.
After that point I get my Ancestral Vison countered as I
have drawn no interaction and then proceed to draw 5 or so lands in a row and
scoop it up.
Sideboarding
After board the mirror is very tempo based and access to
red and blue blasts make a lot of the expensive cards a lot worse.
I bring in 6 cards here:
Blue Elemental Blast
Dire Fleet Daredevil
Flusterstorm
Pyroblast
Red Elemental Blast
Young Pyromancer
I don’t recall precisely what I took out but I believe it
was something like this:
Crucible of Worlds
Cryptic Command
Mana Leak
Lightning Bolt
Liliana, the Last Hope/Fatal Push (I really can’t recall
which)
Field of Ruin
Basically, I’m lowering the costs of my interaction,
trimming some removal and bringing in 2 great threats.
I tend to take the midrange approach of not wanting the
discard spells post board as they are awful top decks but I will note that a
lot of Grixis players disagree with me on that.
(I am unsure of exactly how Jacob boarded but I did not
see any discard in games 2 or 3 so looked like he was on the same page in that
regard.)
Game Two
My hand here is again awkward, containing only 1
land. However, the rest of the hand is
Mental Misstep, Remand, Young Pyromancer, Dire Fleet Daredevil, Dreadbore and
most importantly Ancestral Vision again.
The hand is good enough where I’m comfortable missing a
land drop early so I again enforce my ‘never mulligan a turn 1 Ancestral Vision
on the play’ policy and keep it without much hesitation.
Obviously I draw Kess on turn 2 and miss land number 2
but that’s ok, I was accepting this when I kept the hand.
I hit a tap land on 3, even the right colours, and the
game is on.
Turn 4 I hit Red Elemental Blast which is another
excellent card in the mirror and deploy the Young Pyromancer, mostly as bait as
I expect Jacob to counter it, so I have a better chance of resolving Ancestral
Vision next turn. Jacob has multiple
counters in hand at this point but he also has Toxic Deluge and makes the heads
up play of letting the Young Pyromancer resolve and sweeping it up later.
On his turn 4 Jacob misses his land and chooses to
discard Electrolyze to hand size rather than deploy his Search for Azcanta
because he knows that card advantage is hugely important here and he wants to
be able to fight over the Ancestral Vision.
Turn 5 my Ancestral Vision goes on the stack and we both
go deep in a counter fight, which I ultimately lose with my Remand and Mental
Misstep getting done in by Mana Leak, Spell Snare and his own Mental Misstep
(he still had Force of Will too).
I’m not that sad about this as I get 3 elemental tokens
out of it and am even on cards.
It’s at this point that we start seeing the tempo element
come into play.
Jacob untaps and sweeps the Young Pyromancer and tokens
with his Toxic Deluge which is something he definitely had to do but he is now
tapped out on his turn and I’m untapping with a pretty solid hand, no matter
what the commentators may have thought.
It’s certainly possible he should have countered the Young
Pyromancer instead to avoid this tempo hit but may have thought he needed to
hold on to his counters.
I hit my 4th land here and go into the tank a bit.
My opponent has been doing nothing proactive this game
and has also been stuck on 3 lands for a bit so I have him on more counters,
specifically Force of Will had crossed my mind, or late game bombs like Jace,
the Mind Sculptor or Kess, Dissident Mage.
The reason for tanking is that I have my own Kess in
hand, along with a Red Elemental Blast, and am trying to decide if I should jam
it or hold it and wait till I can get a card out of it immediately from the
yard and/or protect it with my Blast.
I decide to hold it and we end up fighting over Jacob’s
Search for Azcanta on his turn which he gets through my Red Blast with his
Counterspell.
This isn’t great for me as I now have to act as the
Search will bury me if I don’t so I untap and jam the Kess, fully expecting it
to get killed on Jacob’s turn.
Thankfully he has Force of Will blue card instead of a kill spell and he
two for ones himself to counter the Kess.
This is again the correct play here and he definitely doesn’t want to
let me have the Kess but it shows the weakness of Force of Will in the
mirror. I would always side it out in
the mirror if it was in my deck for the same reasons decks like Miracles and
Grixis Control cut it in their mirrors in Legacy; you just can’t afford the
card disadvantage.
We’re now at a board state on Jacob with a Search for
Azcanta in play but no cards in hand and me with nothing in play but 3 cards in
hand in Baleful Strix, Dire Fleet Daredevil and Dreadbore. I’m feeling pretty far ahead but do need to
be proactive in the face of a Search that is going to flip next turn.
Unfortunately I get Blightninged off the top next turn...
I tank here as I would love to keep the Daredevil but
there are no relevant cards in Jacob’s bin so I end up keeping the Strix, again
going with the guaranteed card advantage line, and binning the rest.
I draw very well off my Strix into Tasigur, the Golden
Fang and deploy the threats I needed at this stage of the game.
Jacob finds Nihil Spellbomb and Terminate for his turn,
at the end of which I activate Tasigur.
I don’t really care what I get back from it, any card is good.
Jacob sacs his Spellbomb in response here and does not
pay to draw a card, opting to keep up terminate and Azcanta. I get why you would do this but I don’t like
it. Yes activating search is better than
drawing a random card but it costs you 3 extra mana and leaves you without and
possible interaction on my turn.
Personally I would have drawn the Spellbomb card and taken my
chances. The other possibility I like
here is leaving the yard as is and killing the Tasigur in response to the
activation, meaning you can at worst give me back the Tasigur and then nuke my
bin making it harder to replay.
in any case, I flip 2 into an empty bin and pick up a
Counterspell which I am very happy with.
I untap and draw Electrolyze.
Due to leaving Azcanta up, Jacob is empty handed with no
mana available post Azcanta activation.
He is also on 7 so I bash with my Strix and Wandering Fumarole, putting
him to 2 and forcing him to find removal and a counter for the lethal
Electrolyze.
He finds Dig Through Time into Kefnet to block which
doesn’t do it and I burn him out.
In the end the commentators got it right on this game;
Jacob’s hand was entirely reactive, drawing almost every counter in his deck,
and when he ran out of counters, I still had gas left where he had no cards in
hand due to Force of Will and Spellbomb.
Game Three
I’m on the draw here for the first time so I cut Mystic
Confluence and bring back in my Mana Leak for cheaper interaction.
My hand here is actually keepable for once! Dig Through Time, Electrolyze, Ponder,
Brainstorm and 3 lands.
It doesn’t actually do anything but Ponder and Brainstorm
should fix that easily enough, snap keep.
Jacob’s hand is also good with a Preordain, Dreadbore and
some counters.
I draw my Strip Mine on turn 2 and decide to take my
chances, taking out Jacob’s Creeping Tar Pit.
It ends up working pretty well and Jacob’s only other
land is a Fiery Islet which doesn’t tap for black and ends up dealing 3 damage
to him over the course of the game which may not seem like a big deal in this
kind of mirror but end up being very relevant.
I crack a fetch for a tapped Steam Vents on the end of
Jacob’s turn and he chooses to take that opportunity to cast his Dig Through
Time on his turn. This is interesting
because again, you really do not want to be tapping out on your own turn here
but Dig is a very good card and this does play around my Pyroblast which I do
have in hand.
In hind sight, it was also just a bad play on my part to
fetch the way I did, I should have instead untapped and fetched my Volcanic
Island on my upkeep.
I pass and attempt to resolve my own Dig Trough Time on
Jacob’s end step with Pyroblast and Flusterstorm backup, making me feel pretty
damn safe about it. Annoyingly he again
has Force here but it’s not the worst as I again end up a card up in the
exchange and tap him out on his turn.
Unfortunately, I can’t press the advantage as my hand is
reactive but I get a very favourable tempo exchange with my Remand versus his
Blightning in the next few turns.
Expensive sorcery speed cards are just not where you want to be here
kids.
I end up Remanding it, then Mana Leaking it the next turn
into jamming my Jace, the Mind Sculptor with Spell Snare backup.
He baits the Snare with a Search and then Dreadbores the
Jace but I draw my Daredevil and find Red Elemental Blast and True-Name Nemesis
with Jacob’s Dig.
Jacob elects to not try to Counterspell the True-Name (I’m
not really sure why, perhaps wanting to keep it as protection for his own
threats) and with nothing else going on, my game plan becomes attacking for 3 a bunch before he finds his
Deluge or Rampage.
Instead he finds another expensive sorcery speed card in
Kefnet which I happily dump into his bin for 1 mana with my Red Blast. In hind sight, it may have been correct here
to let it resolve and then kill it with the Blast instead of countering it on
the off chance he puts it back in his deck, guaranteeing a dead draw in a few
turns.
Jacob ends up drawing extremely well here and runs off
Tasigur into Kess which flashes back a Ponder that even finds him the Toxic
Deluge he needs to kill my True-Name!
Unfortunately he’s at 4 life here and is going to take
another hit off the Nemesis leaving him unable to cast the Deluge. If only he had not taken 3 off his Fiery
Islet...
Instead the True-Name finishes the job and I take the
match 2-1 for the home team.
I hope none of this comes off as disparaging against
Jacob, he played well just ending up on the poor side of a few key exchanges in
both games, possibly with some questionable choices that come down to
experience with the deck and the format in general.
All in all this was a fun match with some nice back and
forths in the post board games that I feel highlighted some key interactions in
the mirror and how minor deck building and sideboarding choice can have a large
impact on the games.
For any aspiring Grixis highlander players out there, I
would not recommend putting God-Eternal Kefnet, Fiery Islet, Blightning or
Crucible of Worlds into your decks.
Overall I went 4-1-2 at the event, drawing with Blue Moon and losing to UW control where I misplayed game 1 and got very unlucky game 2 and 5c Green ramp in really awkward games where I could not kill a DRS despite seeing over a third of my deck.
Overall I went 4-1-2 at the event, drawing with Blue Moon and losing to UW control where I misplayed game 1 and got very unlucky game 2 and 5c Green ramp in really awkward games where I could not kill a DRS despite seeing over a third of my deck.
Cheers,
TJ
