Post by SwartDawgMillionaire on Aug 9, 2014 8:44:30 GMT -6
First impressions on Minneapolis Peasant Magic abounded last night at the lair of one Andrew Dale. I’d spent a lot of time trying to put my opinions about the format into the right words before the tournament, and this was what I’d come up with, in brief:
1. The Attack Step matters.
Creatures were going to be the defining win condition of this format. This might not come as a surprise to anyone, but it dovetails into later observations as well. In general, this told me that whoever could stick a better creature was going to probably win the game, provided s/he hadn’t fallen too far behind on life or anything.
2. Control decks won’t look like control decks.
Typically, when we talk about control decks, our minds go to certain places. For those of us who grew up knowing who Randy Buehler is, that place is populated by Rainbow Efreets (okay, one Rainbow Efreet), and looks like the Florida Keys (lots of Islands). In short, a blue-and-instant-based spell sanction deck that draws a shitload of cards from unfair self-contained card drawing engines.
As Magic has evolved, control decks have too. Over time, they’ve looked like Ponza Rotta Red, Odyssey-era MonoBlack, or Cruel Ultimatum circa 2011. They all have some things in common though.
They sanction creature damage through removal or other strategies. This is done for cheap (resulting in a 1-for-1, like Ghastly Demise) or with board sweepers (Wrath of God, Barter in Blood, etc.) that cost a bit more but can net you a lot of cards.
They play a lot of lands. Control decks frequently play high casting cost spells. This is due to a couple of different things, but in general terms, it’s because their creatures need to outclass their opponent’s creatures, and also live through the cheap removal that the aggressive decks have.
Because they play a lot of land, there is a greater premium put on cards that can generate incremental or overwhelming card advantage. If you play 27 Swamps (looking your way, Alex) and your opponent plays 19 Mountains, on average, your draws are going to be less powerful (this term can be debated, but for now let’s define “powerful” as something that actively progresses your victory plan. I understand it’s more nuanced than that, but we could talk about that another day). You do need those lands to play your spells, but you will spend a greater number of draw steps drawing Swamps that don’t win the game while your opponent draws things like Frenzied Goblin or Keldon Marauders or whatever.
Control decks overcome that disadvantage by either playing cards that are very powerful in a vacuum (such as the board sweepers mentioned earlier) or finding ways to draw more cards than their opponent, which lets them play their lands and spells with ease.
You can’t do that in Peasant Magic. Because of the unavailability of a lot of good card drawing (Accumulated Knowledge might be the best self-contained card I can think of, but that’s pretty subjective and up for debate), Control decks can’t recoup that decrease in card quality.
There are exceptions, but when they happen, those tend to be some of the defining decks of the format (consider UGx Threshold decks from the Legacy of yore, when you could play like 17 lands in your control deck against the 23 in Goblins).
3. Removal isn’t good.
I think I was wrong on this, or at least not right. I was thinking about Black removal mostly, and I was comparing it to what I consider to be “good” removal (Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares - both of which are cheap and strong - and Vindicate or Putrefy - both of which are versatile). I use a couple of basic criteria to evaluate removal.
First, it should cost less than the thing you use it to kill. Any removal spell exists to steal tempo from your opponent. If you are using a 1-for-1 removal spell, you clearly don’t generate any card economy from the exchange (1 card for 1 card). What you want is to come out ahead in the exchange of phases. If your opponent has spent 4 mana and his/her entire main phase on turn 5 to cast, say, a Juggernaut and you answer with a Shatter, then you have come out ahead in tempo (provided you can use the rest of your mana and phase to do something else that matters - if not, you might as well have payed 5 for your Shatter).
Second, it should be good at answering randomness. In a format as big as Peasant can be, there will be a great deal of cards that need answering in a given tournament. The more versatile a removal spell, the better. This is why I think counterspells are good cards - they can always answer randomness (but lose you tempo because you’re forced to leave mana open for them, which costs you the use of your phases, but that again is another story for another day).
Third, it really has to be common. A lot of the decks I thought of try to get maximum value from the uncommon slots, and spending that on removal seemed really bad.
This together influenced my opinion of the removal, but I had ignored something really important.
Lightning Bolt exists.
Yes, this card is cheap, coming in at the easy cost of a single tapped Mountain. It’s cheaper than or as cheap as anything in the format, which ticks off the first criterion. Second, it’s really versatile. There isn’t a lot in Peasant with toughness over 3, so it’s as good as Flesh to Dust in most situations. Of course, it can also hit you in the face, which is even more versatile than Swords to Plowshares. Finally, it’s common, so it doesn’t take up your uncommon slot.
We had six decks yesterday. Three of them were red. Two of those played Lightning Bolts, and the fourth probably should have played it, but Alex is contrarian.
Yes, our n is pretty low right now. But with 50% of our field slinging Mountains and Bolts, I’m sure Dave Price, Dan Paskins, and Patrick Sullivan would be pleased.
Is it a coincidence that the deck that took home the money (figuratively) played Blastoderm? You know what wrecks Lightning Bolt? Blastoderm. You know what wrecks Red decks in general? Blastoderm wrecks Red decks in general.
On to the tournament.
For about a week, I brewed up a deck a day or so for Peasant. Most of them you can find in the Developmental section on this forum. Some were really bad, while others were just normally bad. I thought that a few were playable though. I'm pretty sure that my Fires of Yavimaya deck is good, especially given the results of our tournament. I can up with this G/B Land Destruction deck that played Aura Gnarlid, Muscle Sliver, and Predatory Sliver for beaters. Then it occurred to me that I could play Armadillo Cloak alongside Aura Gnarlid, and Sinew Sliver alongside Muscle and Predatory. Thus, West-Coast Bob Gnarly was born (the full name was West-Coast Bob Gnarly Smokes Crack, which was a joke about the WBG acronym, and then also White Rock - get it?), and I sleeved up this 75:
Creatures
x 4 Muscle Sliver
x 4 Predatory Sliver
x 4 Sinew Sliver
x 4 Aura Gnarlid
x 3 Plague Spitter
x 2 Necrotic Sliver
x 2 Gemhide Sliver
Spells
x 4 Rancor
x 4 Armadillo Cloak
x 4 Abundant Growth
x 4 Unearth
Lands
x 4 Hickory Woodlot
x 8 Forest
x 5 Swamp
x 5 Plains
Sideboard
x 3 Ray of Revelation
x 2 Festergloom
x 4 Lymph Sliver
x 3 Sentinel Sliver
x 3 Castigate
Andrew Dale made the cogent point that it doesn't interact at instant speed (like, at all), and that the auras seemed like I was inviting a 2 for 1. Screw it, I thought, I'm too good to be 2 for 1'ed.
Round 1
Alex with Red BOGO (2 for 1's, get it? God, I'm just "on" sometimes)
I helped Alex put this list together, so I felt like I knew what to expect. My plan was try the attrition strategy of leading with slivers for him to kill, and then run out an Aura Gnarlid+Armadillo Cloak turn to avoid getting the Gnarlid killed.
It didn't work. Pretty much everything in Alex's deck kills my guys, so the slivers could never get big enough to live through a single burn spell. We played about 5 games and I don't think I even got a chance to attack in any of them. I boarded in Lymph Slivers, but Alex drew the Flametongue Kavu every time I had Lymph Sliver (I'm pretty sure he just runs, like, 8 FtKs, because he always seems to draw them).
By the end of the round, I'm feeling pretty dejected, and wishing that I would have played the Delver Sligh list I put together, or even taken a flier on the Storm combo I'd been working on.
Games 0-2, Match 0-1
Round 2
Ryan with Bw Extort
This round confirmed some of my suspicions about removal. Ryan had to play with things like Vendetta as cheap removal, and I don't count Vendetta as good removal. Cheap, yes, but it's a pretty significant drawback to lose that much life.
Again though, the slivers don't come through, and I'm never able to stitch together enough damage to win a game. I remember feeling like I misplayed badly on one turn, which resulted in me losing the first game, but I don't remember what it was, and I didn't take any notes.
Games 0-4, Match 0-2
Normally, I would just go to the bar across the street at this point. There would be a friendly bartender to listen to my woes and maybe offer me a quest in exchange for my custom. I would meet up with a couple of strangers, and we would all go adventuring. Unfortunately, Andrew Dale lives across from a freeway, and there's not any good adventuring on the Interstate, so I kept playing.
Round 3
Ed(ward) with RDW
From what I remember about this match, Unearth was a champion and worked pretty much the way I'd imagined. I'd find a way to Rancor a guy when Ed(ward) was tapped out, he'd get 1-for-2'ed, and then I'd unearth. This lead to some 4th turn Aura Gnarlid/Armadillo Cloak shenanigans, which was enough to with 2 of 3 games here.
Games 2-5, Match 1-2
I got to play some 1 v. 1 Commander against Barry, and did silly things with Wild Pair and Copy Enchantment for a while. Then Barry tried to cheat with Reveillark, which I didn't catch, thereby killing off my fun-for-everyone enchantments with an ILLEGALLY recurred Acidic Slime. That Barry. Watch out for him. He's also behind on this whole gravity thing, so remind him to keep working on that.
All in all, the Slivers failed the Legacy, the beatdown was not applied, and Red is good. If I had the tournament to play over, I would play a monoblack deck with Corrupt, Tendrils of Corruption, Drain Life, Consume Spirit, and Pestilence. Flametongue Kavu that, bitch. I might try to put together a deck that plays all of those cards, because it seems like it would be good against this Lightning Bolt metagame. Or, you know, just play Delver Sligh. Because Red is good.
1. The Attack Step matters.
Creatures were going to be the defining win condition of this format. This might not come as a surprise to anyone, but it dovetails into later observations as well. In general, this told me that whoever could stick a better creature was going to probably win the game, provided s/he hadn’t fallen too far behind on life or anything.
2. Control decks won’t look like control decks.
Typically, when we talk about control decks, our minds go to certain places. For those of us who grew up knowing who Randy Buehler is, that place is populated by Rainbow Efreets (okay, one Rainbow Efreet), and looks like the Florida Keys (lots of Islands). In short, a blue-and-instant-based spell sanction deck that draws a shitload of cards from unfair self-contained card drawing engines.
As Magic has evolved, control decks have too. Over time, they’ve looked like Ponza Rotta Red, Odyssey-era MonoBlack, or Cruel Ultimatum circa 2011. They all have some things in common though.
They sanction creature damage through removal or other strategies. This is done for cheap (resulting in a 1-for-1, like Ghastly Demise) or with board sweepers (Wrath of God, Barter in Blood, etc.) that cost a bit more but can net you a lot of cards.
They play a lot of lands. Control decks frequently play high casting cost spells. This is due to a couple of different things, but in general terms, it’s because their creatures need to outclass their opponent’s creatures, and also live through the cheap removal that the aggressive decks have.
Because they play a lot of land, there is a greater premium put on cards that can generate incremental or overwhelming card advantage. If you play 27 Swamps (looking your way, Alex) and your opponent plays 19 Mountains, on average, your draws are going to be less powerful (this term can be debated, but for now let’s define “powerful” as something that actively progresses your victory plan. I understand it’s more nuanced than that, but we could talk about that another day). You do need those lands to play your spells, but you will spend a greater number of draw steps drawing Swamps that don’t win the game while your opponent draws things like Frenzied Goblin or Keldon Marauders or whatever.
Control decks overcome that disadvantage by either playing cards that are very powerful in a vacuum (such as the board sweepers mentioned earlier) or finding ways to draw more cards than their opponent, which lets them play their lands and spells with ease.
You can’t do that in Peasant Magic. Because of the unavailability of a lot of good card drawing (Accumulated Knowledge might be the best self-contained card I can think of, but that’s pretty subjective and up for debate), Control decks can’t recoup that decrease in card quality.
There are exceptions, but when they happen, those tend to be some of the defining decks of the format (consider UGx Threshold decks from the Legacy of yore, when you could play like 17 lands in your control deck against the 23 in Goblins).
3. Removal isn’t good.
I think I was wrong on this, or at least not right. I was thinking about Black removal mostly, and I was comparing it to what I consider to be “good” removal (Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares - both of which are cheap and strong - and Vindicate or Putrefy - both of which are versatile). I use a couple of basic criteria to evaluate removal.
First, it should cost less than the thing you use it to kill. Any removal spell exists to steal tempo from your opponent. If you are using a 1-for-1 removal spell, you clearly don’t generate any card economy from the exchange (1 card for 1 card). What you want is to come out ahead in the exchange of phases. If your opponent has spent 4 mana and his/her entire main phase on turn 5 to cast, say, a Juggernaut and you answer with a Shatter, then you have come out ahead in tempo (provided you can use the rest of your mana and phase to do something else that matters - if not, you might as well have payed 5 for your Shatter).
Second, it should be good at answering randomness. In a format as big as Peasant can be, there will be a great deal of cards that need answering in a given tournament. The more versatile a removal spell, the better. This is why I think counterspells are good cards - they can always answer randomness (but lose you tempo because you’re forced to leave mana open for them, which costs you the use of your phases, but that again is another story for another day).
Third, it really has to be common. A lot of the decks I thought of try to get maximum value from the uncommon slots, and spending that on removal seemed really bad.
This together influenced my opinion of the removal, but I had ignored something really important.
Lightning Bolt exists.
Yes, this card is cheap, coming in at the easy cost of a single tapped Mountain. It’s cheaper than or as cheap as anything in the format, which ticks off the first criterion. Second, it’s really versatile. There isn’t a lot in Peasant with toughness over 3, so it’s as good as Flesh to Dust in most situations. Of course, it can also hit you in the face, which is even more versatile than Swords to Plowshares. Finally, it’s common, so it doesn’t take up your uncommon slot.
We had six decks yesterday. Three of them were red. Two of those played Lightning Bolts, and the fourth probably should have played it, but Alex is contrarian.
Yes, our n is pretty low right now. But with 50% of our field slinging Mountains and Bolts, I’m sure Dave Price, Dan Paskins, and Patrick Sullivan would be pleased.
Is it a coincidence that the deck that took home the money (figuratively) played Blastoderm? You know what wrecks Lightning Bolt? Blastoderm. You know what wrecks Red decks in general? Blastoderm wrecks Red decks in general.
On to the tournament.
For about a week, I brewed up a deck a day or so for Peasant. Most of them you can find in the Developmental section on this forum. Some were really bad, while others were just normally bad. I thought that a few were playable though. I'm pretty sure that my Fires of Yavimaya deck is good, especially given the results of our tournament. I can up with this G/B Land Destruction deck that played Aura Gnarlid, Muscle Sliver, and Predatory Sliver for beaters. Then it occurred to me that I could play Armadillo Cloak alongside Aura Gnarlid, and Sinew Sliver alongside Muscle and Predatory. Thus, West-Coast Bob Gnarly was born (the full name was West-Coast Bob Gnarly Smokes Crack, which was a joke about the WBG acronym, and then also White Rock - get it?), and I sleeved up this 75:
Creatures
x 4 Muscle Sliver
x 4 Predatory Sliver
x 4 Sinew Sliver
x 4 Aura Gnarlid
x 3 Plague Spitter
x 2 Necrotic Sliver
x 2 Gemhide Sliver
Spells
x 4 Rancor
x 4 Armadillo Cloak
x 4 Abundant Growth
x 4 Unearth
Lands
x 4 Hickory Woodlot
x 8 Forest
x 5 Swamp
x 5 Plains
Sideboard
x 3 Ray of Revelation
x 2 Festergloom
x 4 Lymph Sliver
x 3 Sentinel Sliver
x 3 Castigate
Andrew Dale made the cogent point that it doesn't interact at instant speed (like, at all), and that the auras seemed like I was inviting a 2 for 1. Screw it, I thought, I'm too good to be 2 for 1'ed.
Round 1
Alex with Red BOGO (2 for 1's, get it? God, I'm just "on" sometimes)
I helped Alex put this list together, so I felt like I knew what to expect. My plan was try the attrition strategy of leading with slivers for him to kill, and then run out an Aura Gnarlid+Armadillo Cloak turn to avoid getting the Gnarlid killed.
It didn't work. Pretty much everything in Alex's deck kills my guys, so the slivers could never get big enough to live through a single burn spell. We played about 5 games and I don't think I even got a chance to attack in any of them. I boarded in Lymph Slivers, but Alex drew the Flametongue Kavu every time I had Lymph Sliver (I'm pretty sure he just runs, like, 8 FtKs, because he always seems to draw them).
By the end of the round, I'm feeling pretty dejected, and wishing that I would have played the Delver Sligh list I put together, or even taken a flier on the Storm combo I'd been working on.
Games 0-2, Match 0-1
Round 2
Ryan with Bw Extort
This round confirmed some of my suspicions about removal. Ryan had to play with things like Vendetta as cheap removal, and I don't count Vendetta as good removal. Cheap, yes, but it's a pretty significant drawback to lose that much life.
Again though, the slivers don't come through, and I'm never able to stitch together enough damage to win a game. I remember feeling like I misplayed badly on one turn, which resulted in me losing the first game, but I don't remember what it was, and I didn't take any notes.
Games 0-4, Match 0-2
Normally, I would just go to the bar across the street at this point. There would be a friendly bartender to listen to my woes and maybe offer me a quest in exchange for my custom. I would meet up with a couple of strangers, and we would all go adventuring. Unfortunately, Andrew Dale lives across from a freeway, and there's not any good adventuring on the Interstate, so I kept playing.
Round 3
Ed(ward) with RDW
From what I remember about this match, Unearth was a champion and worked pretty much the way I'd imagined. I'd find a way to Rancor a guy when Ed(ward) was tapped out, he'd get 1-for-2'ed, and then I'd unearth. This lead to some 4th turn Aura Gnarlid/Armadillo Cloak shenanigans, which was enough to with 2 of 3 games here.
Games 2-5, Match 1-2
I got to play some 1 v. 1 Commander against Barry, and did silly things with Wild Pair and Copy Enchantment for a while. Then Barry tried to cheat with Reveillark, which I didn't catch, thereby killing off my fun-for-everyone enchantments with an ILLEGALLY recurred Acidic Slime. That Barry. Watch out for him. He's also behind on this whole gravity thing, so remind him to keep working on that.
All in all, the Slivers failed the Legacy, the beatdown was not applied, and Red is good. If I had the tournament to play over, I would play a monoblack deck with Corrupt, Tendrils of Corruption, Drain Life, Consume Spirit, and Pestilence. Flametongue Kavu that, bitch. I might try to put together a deck that plays all of those cards, because it seems like it would be good against this Lightning Bolt metagame. Or, you know, just play Delver Sligh. Because Red is good.
