A couple of other interesting things happened in that tournament too.

The big one for me is that someone tried to cast an uncounterable Huntmaster of the Fells using Cavern of Souls without announcing that he was using the card’s “uncounterable mana”. It got Dissipated and the play was unheld – the judge said that since there was no announcement that the land was being tapped for coloured mana it was defaulted to its colourless mana ability.

I am 100% in agreement with this ruling and I absolutely think that this is the way the card should work. Cavern of Souls is clearly an powerful anti-control card and gives its controller a tool to not even need to play around countermagic. They have the tools right there, right in front of them, right on the table. All its controller needs to do is say what their intention is when they tap their land; they just need to use their cards properly. Why should a card that can hose control if used properly automatically be assumed to be used properly? Magic is a game of skill and part of that skill is knowing, and demonstrating that you know, how to use your cards. If you can’t do that then your opponent should benefit from your misplay or lack of communication.

Here’s the list I ran:

2 Grave Titan 1 Wurmcoil Engine 2 Snapcaster Mage 1 Karn Liberated 4 Mana Leak 3 Dissipate 2 Black Sun’s Zenith 2 Curse of Death’s Hold 2 Ratchet Bomb 2 Doom Blade 4 Tragic Slip 4 Think Twice 3 Forbidden Alchemy 1 Blue Sun’s Zenith 2 Nephalia Drownyard 2 Ghost Quarter 4 Drowned Catacomb 4 Darkslick Shores 7 Island 7 Swamp Sideboard 2 Liliana of the Veil 2 Nephalia Drownyard 2 Nihil Spellbomb 1 Ghost Quarter 1 Ratchet Bomb 1 Tribute to Hunger 1 Sorin Markov 1 Blue Sun’s Zenith 1 Phantasmal Image 1 Black Sun’s Zenith 1 Curse of Death’s Hold

It feels pretty powerful when it’s in your hands, but it’s definitely a durdle deck – long on the draw-go, short on the proactive play. It turned out that even the decks most reliable win condition is reactive. It also seems to mulligan really well. In 10 games I went to 6 twice – the depth of removal the deck has and the strong presence that aggro has in the current meta means that most hands are keepable.

It took me to a 3-1 record, which is the best result I’ve had at a magic tournament for quite a while.

• UB Tezzeret Life-gain, won 2-0
• I forget, but I lost 0-2 or 1-2
• Grixis Control, won 2-1
• UB Zombies, won 2-1

Match 1, game 1 saw my opponent use Elixir of Immortality, Pristine Talisman, Vault Skirge and various other life-gaining artifacts to go to 39 life. His board presence consisted of an array of non-creature artifacts meaning that once my Grave Titan resolved I was beating down for 10, then 14, then 18. I thought the life-gain theme was quite clever and a good call in an aggro meta. Against control it’s a lot of virtual do-nothings, backed up by a few must-counter threats – Phyrexian Metamorph and Tezzeret, and Agent of Bolas come to mind as particular problems.

Match 3 my opponent laid down a disturbing array of threats during the match. Olivia, Liliana, Phyrexian Crusader. Nephalia Drownyard is surprisingly powerful, especially against a deck that runs Forbidden Alchemy and Faithless Looting, already dumping it’s own library into its graveyard. More than once my opponent was forced to run out threats into removal and countermagic, just to stop me having the mana open to mill for 3, or 6, at the end of his turn. I feel dirty saying it, but I miss the good old days when Jacerator was in the format. End of turn milling for 6, followed by milling for 6 in my main phase, letting my opponent draw from an empty library brought it all flooding back.

Match 4 ran out like a control vs aggro matchup. In the second game I died to life-loss enter-the-battlefield effects on a recurring X/2 creature. In two of the games I had the right answers at the right time and used my resources well. For example, running out an early Ratchet Bomb and keeping it on 0 counters. Then watching as my opponent ran out an Obliterator, followed by 5 1 mana zombies – Heartless Summoning is a bitch. End of turn I cast Blue Sun’s Zenith for a million cards, ratcheted up the bomb then untapped. My main phase I looked at what I drew off the Zenith and knew I’d won. I sacrificed the bomb to clear away the weenies then tragically I gave the Obliterator the slip – courtesy of the previous turn’s Zenith – and a 0/0 trampling menace looked sad for a moment, then died. I passed the turn with about 10 mana open, including 2 Drownyards, and my opponent with 14 cards in his library. He managed to use some drawing effect or other to draw a few. End of turn I milled him for 6, my main phase I milled him for 6, and passed the turn.

Cool story bro. But it’s plays like those, straightforward and inevitable, that makes me love playing control.

So the deck. Frankly I love it. But it’s probably going to let me down at FNM, which is a tad more competitive than Wednesday’s event.

I also went all in on the infect plan game one, with Wurmcoil Engine available for games two and three if lifelink and massive ground threats become relevant.

My build did a decent job of stopping stuff from happening, inasmuch as most of the metagame was populated with humans and spirits at x/1 and x/2 toughness. Shutting these decks down seemed to be what my deck did, with 4 Black Sun’s Zenith, 4 Ratchet Bomb and 7 other removal spells in the main deck and a further 10 in the sideboard. As long as it didn’t get awkward draws is stopped the opponent winning, but it had a lot of trouble forcing through the win. This was particularly true against control – I had one UB Control matchup and went 0-1 – and if I hit awkward draws, missing removal and threats.

So my record was 1-2-3 in matches, 6-7-1 in games. I had:

• Gavony Tempered Steel: 1-1
• UB Control: 0-1
• GW Humans: 1-2
• UW Spirits: 1-1
• BU Infect: 1-1-1 (ID)
• Gavony Tempered Steel: 2-1

Most of the games I won were due to Wurmcoil Engine, Black Sun’s Zenith and my opponents’ misplays. I’m happy to be running 8 main deck sweepers and I need to run more win conditions. As for the misplays, these included bouncing Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas with Disperse in response to me targetting my Inkmoth Nexus with his -1 ability. He wanted to do a take-back and cast Vapor Snag on the Nexus instead. From a player who always demands that I play tightly and allows no take-backs I found that request kind of funny.

I think there’s a deck here somewhere if only I had time enough to find it. As it is, I’m not entirely happy that I can find a list that’ll win me games.

• UB Control
• UW Control
• Esper Control
• Solar Flare
• UB Tezzeret Control

Decisions, decisions…

The way I see it, UW doesn’t have enough of the right kind of board control, UB is likely to be a little too slow in the current meta, Esper has all the best options from its three colours available and Tezzeret is a fucking blast. Also of the options Tezzeret is the least Do Nothing.

It makes a change for someone else to not know what my cards do; usually it’s me.

1. Migrate the database
1.1 Backup existing database to an SQL script
1.2 Create a new database server
1.3 Create a new database user
1.4 Create a new database
1.5 Restore data to the new database from the SQL script

2. Move the site into production
2.1 Ensure there is a folder on the web server for mtgsouthwest.co.uk
2.2 Ensure the folder is empty
2.3 Copy the files from the development folder to the production folder
2.4 Change the base URL settings for the site in wp-config.php
2.5 Run searchreplacedb2.php to update BuddyPress links

3 Make sure it all works
3.1 Test all the page links
3.2 Test users can login
3.3 Test user can register
3.4 Test user profile links
3.5 Test forum links

4 Publish the site
4.1 Announce the site’s publication
4.2 Encourage users to register and login

5 Run a Promotion
5.1 Set list of tasks for new users
5.2 Decide on the prize for the prize draw
5.3 Decide on an end point for the promotion
5.4 Monitor activity to…
5.4.1 Ensure users are responding in appropriate numbers
5.4.2 Ensure that the site is working as expected
5.5 Ensure the winner receives their prize

Yeah, this web development. Easy, isn’t it. I have know idea why it takes so long. Mind you, this is just to make sure it’s published without a hitch.

To do this I created a second user account, fired up a second browser, logged in with both accounts at the same time and sent a message from my original, admin account to the new one. Turns out you can only send messages to people on your friends list. Bit inconvenient, and something I’d like to configure before the site goes live. So I navigated to the other account’s profile and added them as a friend. Except, I couldn’t find a way to do that.

So here I was, with a social networking site, with two accounts both logged in and both completely unable to interact with the other. Fucking brilliant.

And back to BuddyPress I went. For all the failings of the theming engine, at least users of a social networking site could actually use the social networking site for social networking.

So that’s where we are. Actually, we’re quite a lot further than that. There’s forums and groups. The groups allow some forums to be kept private if that’s ever needed. Users can search these to find relevant information and if they can’t find it they can create a group to discuss their interests. There are user profile pages it’s possible to post comments to, rather like the wall of another site you might have heard of. There’s private messaging for, well, messaging in private. And there’s even an events section – a calendar of events, colour-coded by town or city, visible a month at a time with links to information about each event.

There’s a chap called Tom Palmer. Now, Tom is brilliant. He’s only gone an designed a logo and a masthead for the site. I’m really pleased with his work and how the site looks as well as how it functions.

At the moment I’ve thrown it to the lions’ den and a group of about 10 people are using it, trying to break it, making sure that everything works as they expect it to and that the tasks they needs to perform are performed how they expect. This has thrown up a couple of things. First, email notifications were happening for every single action that takes place on the site that affects your account – for Tom this was generating about 200,431 emails a day. Fortunately there are options in user account settings for such things. Phew! Also, another user identified that the way I’d structured the forum did necessarily make sense in all circumstances – although I’ll defend my decision, I can see how having two separate groups for Modern and Legacy format discussion might be an obstacle if you want to discuss prize support for Modern and Legacy events you plan to run.

But that’s all part of the process and all those detail will get sorted out.

So thank you to Tom and thank you also to the testing people.

So yeah, that’s my innovation history. Funny but not good.

I think my card evaluation skills are OK and have been getting better. I championed Sphinx of Jwar Isle when it was first legal, and even got my playset for a total of £1.20 – four rares for 30p each? Sweet. Few people would listen to me – it loses to Baneslayer Angel, they said. I mean sure, it’s relevant that it doesn’t have first strike but it’s also relevant that the Sphinx has shroud. It can’t killed with Doom Blade or double Lightning Bolt, it can’t commit an Act of Treason. So anyway, the Sphinx started seeing more and more play as a control finisher. Who knew? I also said that Bloodgift Demon was a bad call in an aggro metagame. Chosing between taking 1 damage or giving your opponent an extra card isn’t a good decision to give yourself when you’re expecting to face Stromkirk Noble, Insectile Aberration or Geist of Saint Traft most matches. I think I was actually told I was an idiot for that one, but I might be misremembering.

So where am I going with this?

I’m never going to set the world on fire – or indeed overrun it – as I can’t look at a pile of cards and make a decent deck out of them. I can, given time and opportunity for testing, take an existing deck and make good decisions about what cards to run in it that aren’t based on the hive mind. I’m never going to be more than a dirty netdecker. So, on with netdecking, I say!

Esper Control has seen a lot of love recently, but it’s a right pain in the arse to play, moreso that U/W or U/B Control decks of past Standard formats. I’ve not been putting up the results with this deck that I’d like to, so I’m going to take the deck apart and rebuild it from the ground up, using a combination of my own card evaluation and that of other players as I do so. My aim in doing so is to have a blue-white-black control deck that beats a metagame full of aggressive decks to the best of my play ability. This could be considered a thought experiment and literary review of Esper Control in the Scars-M12-Innistrad metagame.

The Plymouth Metagame?
Plymouth is rammed full of agressive beat down decks of all flavours. There are UW Delver, UR Delver, GW Thrun, RUG Delver Control, RDW and a smattering of Tempered Steel. The most prevalent card is probably Delver of Secrets, a one-drop that becomes a zero-drop. There’s a goodly dose of Hexproof creatures like the inoffensive Invisible Stalker and dastardly Thrun, the Last Troll and between Midnight Haunting and Moorland Haunt tokens are popular too.

What this means is that the value of spot removal is limited. If your opponent wants to beat down with dudes that you cannot target and with other dudes that are not cards, spending a card and two mana to kill one is either impossible to feels like extremely bad value.

So sweepers seem good at the moment as do edict effects. Generally, cards like Slagstorm, Day of Judgment, Black Sun’s Zenith and Ratchet Bomb can be played for value at the moment. Interestly, Ratchet Bomb doesn’t even look like it’s being sideboarded at the moment, despite the blow-out it offers a lot of opposing decks the opportunity to walk into – including mine, with its White Sun’s Zenith win condition.

So with this is mind, let’s examine Esper, from the ground up.

Removal Suite
The Esper colours offer the sexiest removal cards in Standard that the moment. Possibly the least compelling colour for removal of the three is blue. Realistic options are Vapor Snag and possibly Disperse. Sensory Deprivation has been tabled by Michael Braverman as a one-of in the sideboard. I think I’d rather run a straight up removal spell over it. It’s an answer for Delver of Secrets, certainly, but so are Doom Blade, Go for the Throat and Dismember. To be fair, I haven’t seen any lists mention Disperse except one of my own as I was preparing to return to playing Magic earlier this month, and even I cut it for the 27th land. However, Into the Roil saw play, but the lack of the cantrip option does sting. I think perhaps that in such a creature heavy metagame Vapor Snag is just better.

White’s removal is Oblivion Ring and Day of Judgment. Someone played a Rebuke against me recently – I think it was in a Bant deck – and I had to read it. I struck me that Condemn is looking expensive these days. I’m not a fan of conditional removal. I’ve been trained in software development so being agile is a part of my conditioning and cards like Rebuke are neither agile enough to be truly useful nor cheap enough to be forgiven. Oblivion Ring gets rid of almost everything you’d want it to. Millions of words have been written about the utility (agility?) of Oblivion Ring so I probably don’t need to say any more. Day of Judgment is simply too good in a control deck not to run in as many multiples as we can squeeze in. In a world where every decks attacks with multiple creatures – and a lot of those creatures have hexproof – Day of Judgment is king. And Ratchet Bomb is an Archduke.

Black. Doom Blade. I’ve seen two decks running black recently – mine and a Tezzeret infect deck with millions of artifact creatures. It’ll be the release of Dark Ascension before Doom Blade loses value in a control decks. For Blades 5 and 6 the Go for the Throat is a option, but I’m not convinced that three (plus one in the ‘board) isn’t enough anyway. The other options are Wring Flesh and Geth’s Verdict. I like the Verdict because it kills Thrun, the Last Troll as well as the other hexproof… things aggro likes to mess about with. Wring Flesh is there to answer the sames cards as Sensory Deprivation, for the most part, and as an instant arguably does it better.

As I’ve said before, in a world of wall to wall 1-drops I don’t hate Ratchet Bomb.

Counter Suite
There are, of course, the usual countermagic suspects: Mana Leak, Negate, Dissipate and Flash Freeze. Dissipate outclasses Cancel and Stoic Rebuttal for us by some considerable margin. There are too many blue-white aggro decks to run Flash Freeze in the main, but it deserves a solid place in any control sideboard at the moment. Mana Leak is a funny one. When it’s good it’s fantastic, but there are too many times when it is simply played around at the moment. LSV has noted that it opponents have a tendency to play as if you have it even if you don’t – so I might as well not, I guess.

I’ve already mentioned Mental Misstep as a sideboardable answer to all the 1cmc critters running around Standard at the moment. I like this, for all the reasons that Misstep is good, and in fact I like it so much I’m tempted to maindeck it.

Card Advantage Suite
I know it’s instrumental to blue-based control’s success, but taken individually I not too impressed by the card advantage options open in Standard at the moment. I mean they’re OK but I’d rather have the consistency of Jace’s Ingenuity over the scalability of Blue Sun’s Zenith. It’s only that Think Twice and Forbidden Alchemy are instants that I’m running them over Divination and Ponder.

Defensive Suite
Timely Reinforcements. Snapcaster Mage. Awesome. Next.

Threat Suite
I alluded to this at the outset but Grave Titan is bonkers and I don’t know why I didn’t realise it before, even after winning a blow out game when it resolved. That bad boy doesn’t even need to stay on the table to have an impact on the game.

A resolved Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite is game over immediately, which is a shame as I’d quite like to be allowed to attack with an army of 4/4 cats into a 4/4 Primeval Titan.

Talking of which, White Sun’s Zenith is just too, too good not to have a place in this deck.

The other options for finishers are Sun Titan and Consecrated Sphinx. What are the most exciting permanents I could be bringing back from the graveyard? A used Ghost Quarter? A used Snapcaster Mage? A milled Island? None of that excites me. In the previous Standard with Wall of Omens, Spreading Seas, Jace Beleren and Ratchet Bombs Sun Titan was the shiz, but at the moment it’s a bit blah. Consecrated Sphinx is unarguably a blow-out if the other team doesn’t have spot removal, but a single end-of-turn or upkeep Vapor Snag and you’re time walking all the way back a turn.

Mana Base

Mana bases at the moment at rather unexciting. The Isolated Chapel cycle of dual lands has made archetypes like Esper viable. The non-basic land options are Glacial Fortress, Drowned Catacomb, Seachrome Coast, Darkslick Shores and Isolated Chapel. Another interesting choice could be Pristine Talisman – in multiples in can nullify aggro’s game plan, which is tempting.

Sideboarding
With a maindeck that I am resolutely aiming to tweak for an aggro metagame I need some decent answers for control as well as some specialised answer for specific aggro matchups.

The cards that seem good sideboard options are:

Karn and the Reins are long-game answers for control matchups, and in the same games Negate comes in for Mana Leak. Flashfreeze comes in for Mana Leak against red and/or green decks. Mental Misstep comes in against Delver decks.

So…
So, with those options what would you play?