So, last week I showed you the sealed pool I had. Well, this is the deck I ultimately ended up with
I honestly felt like going into red was a trap. I felt like White might be a good color to go with black. I had two scourgemarks and a erebo's emissary and white had good heroic cards, blue also looked strong with the god sea's revenge and curse of the swine. But I just went with this because it seemed more aggressive and stormbreath dragon looks like it can just close games on its own. However, I want you guys to note that even though I have more red cards, I really feel like black is the strongest color in this pool.
Traveler's amulet seems really loose and bad, but oh well. It's what I went with. One thing I quickly discovered was that I like constructing paper decks over doing them on MTGO. There is a lot less space to spread out your cards, etc.
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So round 1, I played against someone playing simic splash black
Here was the results of game 1:
As you can see, my RB aggro start was good.
Game 2 wasn't so good, I just couldnt' deal with prognostic sphinx
So game 3, I decided to take a risk and go transformative
Curse of the swine did so much work!!! It was a super board sweep with X=4
There you can see my opponent decides not to block my triton hunter, I discard two creatures and have just enough to drain with gray merchant.
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So round 2, I had the perfect curve my opponent couldn't deal with in game 1:
Game 2 was close, I was holding most of the cards the entire game but my opponent decided to get mad and say I was lucky:
I mean most of those cards were cards I had in my hand the entire game, like the gray merchant etc. I ember swallow'd early because I was getting mana flooded and was stuck on 4 lands post ember swallower for a long time. I mean it's not like he had his own bombs of gray merchant as well or nighthowler... Oh well
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So I played out round 3. However, I forgot to take screenshots as my second round was short and I left for a while, when I came back a few minutes had gone by and I was nervous! The guy had a white red deck that was heroic centric and had lots of combat tricks!
Today I wanted to talk about a fun deck that is worth about 1 to 2 event tickets, what I call Izzet Aggro. It features all 1 drops and 2 drops, and is inspired by QSP's use of hidden strings. I really liked the idea of using hidden strings multiple times in a turn, and really liked its interaction with nivmagus elemental. The problem was that I wanted more with hidden strings. I wanted to be able to utilize it more often, so I turned to Young Pyromancer. From there, I decided I could not go more than two colors because this was budget.
Here is the decklist:
Click to make the image larger.
So a bit about my card decisions before I jump into a game!
First, mizzium mortars is there to hit big guys that the elemental might never be able to hit. The 4 nimagus elemental and 4 young pyromancer are already givens. Akrosan Crusader is also just another guy I can hit with hidden strings as a bonus, since I do not have wavecrash triton like QSP did in his blue/white deck. From there, I realized that one activation with nivmagus elemental's ability would turn on an ordeal, but I only had two to choose from. One that would let me draw 2 cards, or one that would burn something. I like the shock over the burn. Triton tactics is there to save me from burn, since my guys do not have any real protection on their own. Shock is there because I used up the 2 tickets and those were the cheapest burn spell. Rakdos Cackler is something that I thought would help, its unleash brings you that much closer with ordeal of thassa. Additionally, I wanted to use madcap skills because I feel like this deck needs to put as much pressure as possible. That also works well with rakdos cackler in the ways RDW used both last standard season.
The sideboard: I put in blistercoil weird because if you are facing a deck that is like esper that has tons of removal, you need more creatures. I could not think of a better 1 or 2 drop that also benefited from me ciphering/casting spells. The 1 electrickery is in there in case I face someone who is playing tokens or RDW. Mizzium skin is additional protection against spot removal or burn. Negate is there for the same reason, but can also counter an anger of the gods or a planeswalker if it gets to that stage.
Skull crack is probably the most important, I don't think I'm winning if the opponent is gaining life every turn.
Anyway, we have the deck suited up. Let's go and play a match or two!
So here was my starting hand. I was going second and I don't know what I'm playing against:
Seems keep-able right? If you can't see this image or any, then just click on it to make it bigger.
Anyway, as long as they don't kill the pyromancer, I can get in some good damage.
So here you can see they killed the young pyromancer and they are playing grixis control! So I better be careful. I do like that I have Cackler and two ordeals though.
So here you can see, I was able to get the two ordeals on the cackler and top decked a hidden strings as well to tap down his lands for a safe attack. Because of this, I am able to sacrifice one of the ordeals and draw two cards on the cackler's first attack.
As you can see here, he was able to deal with everything I had with multiple burn spells on my big guy. I feel like my chances of winning are slipping as all I am drawing are lands (in a 18 land deck!!) He soon after beat me with a jace, architect of thought followed by chandra, pyromaster
So it's sideboard time!
Essentially it's sideboard in 2 negate and the 4 blistercoil weirds so I don't get devour flesh'd as much.
So here we go:
So I'm on the play. This hand is very good if I can get there and draw an island!
I draw. It's not an island. Oh no. I'll just play another creature so I can try to protect myself from devour flesh. I can't just overextend everyturn by dropping one guy though because these grixis decks do play anger of the gods.
So I draw again. It's a land! Too bad it's a mountain.
So I use the dynacharge to make my nivmagus elemental bigger so I can start attacking. Meanwhile, I draw an izzet guildgate and have to wait next turn to pass. Then we get to the above. I am set up. I can hidden strings, target my crusader and then exile with the elemental and the weird will buff up as well!
So I don't know if you can see it in this picture, but the turn after he ended up trying to cast far/away. I negated it. He then goes to spend all of his mana to double magma jet my big elemental and the following turn drops this mercurial chemister. I, however, draw dynacharge, which given his lifetotal and the fact that he is tapped out is GG.
He conceded before game 3 started.
So for the other game I want to show, I uploaded to youtube. I have to find a better way to record MTGO matches outside of my phone. It's horrible quality and I'm sorry. I'm the player on top. However, you get to see how well I do facing down a blood baron and esper in general.
Anyway. That's the izzet aggro deck! I think it does pretty well, all things considered, for budget. Control like esper or grixis is definitely the hardest matchups. I think I get lucky when I beat those ones.
Finally, last night Jace vs Vraska duel deck was announced! Maybe Jace Architect of thought's price will go down!
Anyway, we faced off.
Game 1: I got him down to 1 life and he came back with pontiff of blight, a 2/7 that gives all creatures you control extort. Couldn't recover from that as I was just drawing lands.
Game 2: I drew all my lyev skyknights, and counters at the right times. I had 3 aetherize in my hand so I kept him from ever attacking.
Game 3: I turn 2 countered his daxos and he conceded.
I have played a couple other games with other people with this bant flash list. I played bant flash last standard season with restoration angel, thragtusk, sphinx's revelation, farseek being the 4 key cards for that deck.
This deck had some remnants of the deck. A horizon chimera with opportunity is like a sphinx's revelation. Since this was budget MTGO, I only had enough tix for 1 advent (total deck price is 2 event tickets).
QSP can comment more on how his own deck did. I can say though, I was watching a game where he was playing vs esper control (powered and expensive version) and ended up winning the match despite the board looking like this:
I had more screenshots of our games but they are just black screens. I don't know why.
