Being the Groan Test - My Legacy Experience at the SCG Invitational
This isn't about Limited, so here it is. This past weekend, I showed up in Baltimore on Saturday in time to play the Legacy Challenge. Although I've become more of a Limited player, Legacy is still my constructed format of choice and almost tied for my first love. I decided to play the Mono Blue Control deck written about by John Sava in his article on LegitMTG. Having no prior experience with the deck, I played the list with no modifications. And no practice. And no idea how to sideboard. You get the point.
If you are too lazy to look up the deck, here's a shorthand version.
It plays a lot of these:
And takes a really, really, really long time because of this:
The Matches
Round 1 - Bant Stoneblade
My opponent leads off with Stoneforge Mystic into Batterskull. This makes me nervous because I haven't played my deck before. I Trinket Mage and chump, then resolve a Pithing Needle naming Jace, the Mind Sculptor. In thinking about Energy Field, I concluded that without discard and only Swords to Plowshares, the only possible way my opponent could beat me through Energy Field was with Jace or with me drawing too many non-land cards, but no second Energy Field and having to discard. Long story short, I stick Energy Field and Back to Basics and my opponent scoops about 35 minutes later to beats from my 6/6 Chimeric Mass.
In the second game, my opponent grins when he Krosan Grips my Back to Basics. However, that lets me stick Vedalken Shackles to remove his pressure. I eventually get him under CounterTop lock with Energy Field and he spends the next 17 hours using Knight of the Reliquary to thin lands from his deck trying to get to his second Krosan Grip. He does not. Although, had he managed to, I was keeping a Trinket Mage on top of my library with Top. And I also had three more Energy Field in hand at that point. Time ran out and I won, 1-0-1.
Round 2 - RUG Delver
I played against a fellow LegitMTG shirt-wearer whom I hadn't met before. We played solid games and in the end I fell to his repeated early Delver + flips and otherwise extremely good hands. He won the first game and then scooped the second one when I locked him out. In the final game, I went through a huge amount of my deck with Tops and Fetches for a very large number of turns and was unable to find a Counterbalance or another Energy Field with what I think was 3 of each left in my deck. So I feel like I might have had a shot here, had I drawn a little better. At least a shot to tie it up.
I can't remember how I sideboarded here, but I do remember not drawing my sideboard cards for the most part. I shaved some Force of Wills, which I feel like was correct. I instead went for Dispel/Spell Pierce in some mix. I definitely brought in an extra Clique and a Shackles. The third Shackles may have been a mistake. I'm not sure.
Round 3 - RUG Delver
Again? This guy tried to get me to play/draw by doing three card monty with his Rock, Paper and Scissors cards from Unglued. I declined. We argued. I prevailed. Then he wanted to roll different dice. I declined. I prevailed. He commented on my LegitMTG shirt. I commented on his Lakers apparel and lightly trolled him by saying "that's the team with player X right?" Where X = Shaq, Scott Skiles and Charles Barkley in turn, with him saying that I'm incorrect each time. Then I tell him that I can't stand watching sports on TV and I'd rather play them myself. And he looks confused and frightened.
Bottom line, I lock him out game 1 and he tries WAY too long to beat me. He eventually scoops. Game 2, he gets a nut draw, I draw pretty poorly and he gets me. Game 3, there's basically no way we finish on time. He seems kind of cagey and angle-shooty, so I shuffle and play fast to avoid him trying to get some slow play shenanigans on me. We go to turns and he shows me a Natural Order in hand asking if I'll concede. I of course have a grip of counters. I think about it for a bit and concede, though. He looked miserable all through game 1 and I felt a little guilty. Also, neither of us gets anywhere with a draw since it's worth the same as a loss, so I give it to him. I highly doubt he would have done the same for me. And if he thinks positively about LegitMTG in the future because of this, it probably works out in my favor.
The other relevant thing here is that I talked to Chris Kronenburger after round 1 about the deck and the RUG Delver match. I took Chris' advice on sideboarding and took out Energy Fields for game 2. I concluded that was a mistake after losing game 2 in a fashion where Energy Field would have saved me. This will be relevant shortly because...
Round 4 - RUG Delver
Cool metagame, huh? I'm only surprised that I didn't play against some variant of Maverick, which is apparently the other 300% of the meta. That is a deck against which I would like to practice given that it is both reasonably affordable (by Legacy standards), very popular and apparently highly successful.
The last guy I play is someone that I don't know, but I definitely remember either meeting or playing against previously. Long story short, I brutally lock him out game 1 and he scoops after a while. Much faster than my prior opponents. Smart guy. I go back on the "ignore Chris Kronenburger's sideboard advice" plan and keep in Energy Fields, which the RUG deck seems to be basically unable to beat in multiples. Game 2, I slow him down with Meekstone (which he has to read) and then get him locked out and kill him with Vendilion Clique.
Here are some things I learned about playing RUG Delver with Mono-Blue Control:
Unless you are in danger of getting Stifled, fetch aggressively. One of their only ways to get rid of your Energy Field is to use a Wasteland on one of your fetches. I figured this out really fast and either fetched aggressively or just declined to play my fetches. I later saw someone playing MUC in the Open die to a top decked Wasteland when he played out a fetch.
Don't play a Trinket Mage against RUG with Energy Field up unless you have CounterTop lock active. This gives them a Bolt target. Contrast this with UW Stoneblade where you can run them out all day because Swords and Path don't blow your field.
Run out Back to Basics early. It will either draw a Daze and slow them down or draw a Force and eat their hand. Or, stick and hose their ability to play spells. Either way, it will also force them to fetch sub-optimal basics if they even play them just to hedge. This gives you a good window to lock them out and then just stick another Back to Basics later if it's even needed.
Mongeese aren't very scary. It takes them WAY longer than Delver to become a threat on average. Although they can't be taken with Shackles, the Shackles can take their Delver or Goyf to trade with their Mongoose.
RUG apparently doesn't run Ancient Grudge?!
Pithing Needle is dead against RUG Delver. Whenever I drew it naturally, I played it out naming either Misty Rainforest or Scalding Tarn, depending on what they'd used the least of so far. This either was to bait counters or just slightly land screw them down the road. Which is not irrelevant, but you board these out REALLY fast.
The end. My 2-2 finish was enough for a pack of Dark Ascension. My scoop karma paid off and I opened a Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. Not bad for $10!
Joey went 4-0 with my Misdirections in Show and Tell and I forgot to extract a fee of some sort. Bleeding value, here.
Thoughts on the Deck
I really, really like this deck. It is totally my style, being slow, grindy and rewarding/punishing sequencing and patience. It feels very much like playing chess against a perfectly-matched opponent. You spend the entire game trying to set up a very long position.
I did not, however, like the sideboard or the Chimeric Mass. At the suggestion of Chris Kronenburger, I am trying a Batterskull instead. If it works well, I will probably add one to the sideboard too. I also switched my main deck bounce from Echoing Truth to Repeal at his suggestion due to how well it works against Delver of Secrets (costs one to bounce a flipped Delver AND draw a card, playing around Spell Snare and sometimes Daze too) and, to a lesser extent, pre-Threshold Mongeese. I made a few other tweaks as well, but they are less interesting.
As far as sideboard cards go, the MVP was definitely Meekstone. This is slanted based on the fact that I played against RUG Delver three times. That said, it would cause opponents to avoid flipping their Delvers. I would sometimes take 1 from a Mongoose and then on my turn force my opponent to play enough into their yard that the Mongoose didn't untap on their next turn. It obviously works well on Goyfs. It was very solid and I am now looking to upgrade to black-bordered. Preferably Korean. But we'll see.
Would I play this again? Absolutely. It is now "my deck" and I will play it whenever I can, continuing to learn it better, refine my list and develop a sense of how the sideboard should adapt to the metagame.
Other Stuff
I did some sake bombs with Mark Sun. That was awesome. Thanks, Mark. I needed to cut loose a little.
I drafted a ridiculously good deck in the Draft Open and died in round 2 to a biblical-level flood two games in a row. I think I drew 10 spells and 18 land total across both games, if I counted right. That felt pretty rough because I think I could have easily 3-0'd my pod. I may write about the deck and the experience in an article, so you'll have to hold your breath. Here's a teaser, though. Bing Luke said it looked like a constructed deck. I was also feeding Gerard Fabiano who was in one of my colors and got knocked out in round 1. Success!
Kudos to SCG for the excellent bag security. In retrospect, I probably could have taken my trade binder after all. Although I didn't really feel like trading and my spine still works, so it may have been a good decision anyway.