Last weekend was a good weekend

Hello all!

If you followed the Modern GP in Prague last weekend, then you might have seen that I managed to top 8 the event with Krark-Clan Ironworks Combo, or KCI for short. So I thought it was in order to write a short account of what happened this weekend and how I managed to spellbomb my way onto the Pro Tour.

The Deck

So before getting into the tournament, a few words about my deck choice. I am more of a control player at heart, but have a sweet spot for combo decks. Just like everyone else in the Magic world, I was astounded by Matt Nass’s double GP top8s with the deck and headed over here to check out what the deck was all about (A new updated article is available here). It didn’t take me very long to realise how broken it was, and decided to start playing it about 3 weeks before the GP. I generally don’t have a lot of time to play online, so my testing came down to a few evenings at the pub with some of the London Legacy players. I didn’t like the Wurmcoil Engine from Matt Nass’s list as I think you really want to get something out to stall the board before you play KCI. Wurmcoil shines against midrange decks but they are on the down at the moment. Sai, Master Thopterist had been introduced to the deck at the Pro Tour and it turned out to be the perfect replacement card for everyone’s favourite wurm. In fact, Sai turned out to be very strong indeed so it was easy for me to cut one of the Ghirapur Aether Grid for a second one. I also discovered quickly that it wasn’t 100% necessary to play Yavimaya Coast to be able to cast it as all your eggs (Chromatic Star, Chromatic Sphere and Terrarion) fix mana. Obviously this is not a good solution when you’re facing a Stony Silence, but as I didn’t have any Yavimaya Coast lying around, I decided to play without blue lands.

Either way, other than that and my irrational fear of Surgical Extraction which lead me to exchange one of the Guttural Responses for a Dispel last minute, my list was standard.

Krark-Clan Ironworks Combo

I took this list (minus the Dispel) to one of Axion Now’s Mega Modern tournaments at the English Nationals a week before the GP where I finished 7-2. Although I made some mistakes due to unfamiliarities with some of the many interactions in the deck, I proved to myself that this deck seriously packs a punch.

The Loop(s)

Krark-Clan Ironworks Combo is a beautifully designed deck and all the pieces work very well together, resulting in a great amount of consistency and power which may or may not be too much for Modern. It is also very complex and you have to know what board states actually win you the game, and what the lines are that let you do so. The Friday evening before the English Nationals, I got my notepad out, put on some calming music and started to write down all the loops that I could find. Long story short there are a lot of them! So, I decided instead of trying to learn 15 different ways of winning the game, to just learn one or two and try to engineer my way to a position where I can apply my favourite loop.

So how do I KCI?

I used this loop in most of my games to win, because it does everything you want in the same loop. It makes mana, it draws your deck and it kills your opponent. There are quite a number of sweet loops which I will leave for you to explore, especially the ones involving Sai, Master Thopterist.

GP Prague 2018



GP Prague 2018 started before it started, let me explain. A few weeks leading up to the GP, I’m trying to organise people to go to Prague, enjoy the city and maybe play some Magic. With little success. I ended up booking an airbnb, some people jumped off last minute, I was due to travel on my own. Well, not the best start. I had booked though and the girlfriend was on holiday, so what else was I going to do on a bank holiday weekend. Friday morning, I woke up with a terrible headache and decided to work from home until my flight later in the afternoon. The headache got worse and by the time I arrived in Prague all I wanted to do was to take an aspirin bath. As I still had to register my deck, I got out my playmat, laid out the deck and started to make changes. Luckily I was still awake enough to realise what a terrible idea it is to make last minute changes like this, so I left it as is. Although, I did make 1 change, which I had thought about for a couple of days, which was putting in 1 Dispel over the third Guttural Response. The cards are very similar but with Dispel being able to counter Surgical Extraction I decided it was probably worth it.

Tournament Report

Day 1:

After a good night’s sleep, things started to look up. My headache had started to dwindle and I ran into some familiar faces at the convention centre. Ready for round 1. Or round 3, I guess.

Before I get into the matches, I want to say that these descriptions are as best as I remember them and I may have confused some of the Humans matches with one another.

Round 1: Bye 1-0

Round 2: Bye 2-0

Round 3: UW control 2-1

Off to a good start to the tournament, I sat down against UW control, which I think is quite the tough match-up. I need to resolve this 4 mana artifact and almost everything else in my deck is irrelevant. Things don’t get much better post sideboard as these lists tend to run both Rest in Peace and Stony Silence. So, my goal was clear, steal game 1 through a fast KCI on turn 3 when my opponent doesn’t have Cryptic Command up yet. This didn’t pan out quite as planned, but after I got the first KCI countered, the second stuck and we were off to the races.

Game 2, I looked at an opening hand something like Darksteel Citadel, KCI, Mox Opal, Chromatic Star, Inventors’ Fair, Mind Stone and possibly an Ichor Wellspring. I remember the hand being very fast, but light on green and crucially no Nature’s Claim for his turn 2 Stony Silence.

Onto game 3 then, which was very similar to game 2. My opponent played a turn 2 Stony Silence, and I never found the Nature’s Claim, and conceded to some unreasonable number of loyalty counters on my opponent’s Jace, the Mind Sculptor.

Round 4: RG Titan Shift 3-1

I have to say that I was pretty relieved when my opponent started his turn 1 with forest into suspend Search for Tomorrow. Although I hadn’t played the match-up before, I could not image it being bad for KCI as it just goldfishes faster. Confident as ever I then proceed to miss my 4th mana source for an uncomfortable number of turns. I managed to get it just the turn after my opponent played a Primeval Titan, surprisingly late as well.

Game 2, was quite interesting as my opponent had 2 Relic of Progenitus and 1 Damping Sphere. However due to him keeping quite a reactive hand, his clock was too slow and an Engineered Explosives on 1 combined with a Nature’s Claim freed up my way to victory.

Round 5: Hardened Scales 4-1

I love this deck (much more than mine)! It has so much stuff going on and it was definitely on my list of decks to play for the GP, especially as my good friend Nic had been working on it for some number of months leading up to the event. However, due to not having that much time to prepare and knowing myself well enough that I’d just mess up the combat maths somewhere, I decided to leave it for another tournament. Either way, as sweet as the deck is, game 1 it feels just a tad too slow for the KCI matchup, especially on the draw.

I don’t have a good recollection of this match, but I believe that Sai, Master Thopterist bought me enough turns to find and play the KCI and put the match away.

So far so good, I bounced back from my round 3 loss and was ready to qualify for day 2. I felt pretty good at this point as the in between rounds chit-chat with the team Axion guys and the Luxembourgish players kept my mood high.

Round 6: Humans 5-1

Here we go, the ‘other’ boogie man. My opponent opened with unclaimed territory into Aether Vial and we all know what happens next, a Kitesail Freebooter taking my KCI into a savage face stomping. Onto game 2. I believe my opponent mulliganed a bunch and we go to the decider.

I do believe it is this round where I was facing quite the board. Some number of beaters backed up by a Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and a pair of Meddling Mages. One naming Engineered Explosives, the other naming KCI. I was on some reasonably low life total when my opponent passed the turn and I got to activate an Inventors’ Fair. The only line I saw was to get a Pyrite Spellbomb and hope for the best. I thus channeled my inner LSV and drew an Engineered Explosives for the turn! Spellbomb killed the Meddling Mage naming EE, I played the EE for 2, and passed the turn with 2 mana up. After destroying most of my opponents board during combat, I got to untap on 3 or 4 life, cast a KCI and it was academic from there.

Round 7: Humans 6-1

Humans again! Well we know how this goes, two quick games of face smashing and we were onto the decider. My opponent played a turn 2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben but apart from that, little interaction. I had a Pyrite Spellbomb, but my opponent had a second Thalia. So I had one plan and one plan only, get to 5 mana! When I did, I went KCI into Scrap Trawler. As always, I was probably dead if I passed the turn, so I decided to cycle a few 1-, erm 2-, mana artifacts. In one of the first draws with my cantrips I found a Mox Opal and we were good to go. I cast an Ichor Wellspring sacrificed it for mana, returned spellbomb, killed the Thalia and started everyone’s favourite part of Modern at the moment – the KCI player trying to find a Myr Retriever. I think it took me quite a while, but given that I found 2 more Scrap Trawlers, it wasn’t really very close. Yay, day 2!

Round 8: Hollow One 7-1

This was quite the match, in how ridiculous it was! My opponent was on the play and mulliganed to 6. Turn 1, he started by cycling Street Wraith into, fetch – shock, Faithless Looting, Hollow One, Hollow One. Easy game, easy life! My hand was very fast, I think it had a turn 3 kill if all went well. My opponent untaped, attacked for 8 and played land, Flameblade Adept before passing the turn. I developed my board a bit further ready to strike on the following turn and said go. When my opponent, end of turn, taped his land and pointed his last card, a Lightning Bolt at me, I knew I had just gotten out-moderned! While shuffling up for game 2, both me and my opponent had a good chuckle at that game 1. Onto game 2.

I saw Sai, Master Thopterist in my opening hand as well as the resources to cast him. I think Sai is very strong in this matchup as a few incidental thopters can make all the difference and allow you to survive the extra turn you need to combo off. It is obviously also an alternative win condition when they have a Leyline of the Void in play. So, long story short, I made a turn 3 Sai plus a thopter and on the following turns flooded the board with pesky 1/1 flyers, and chumped my way into a game 3.

I don’t remember game 3 too well, but I think both Leyline of the Void and Nature’s Claim were involved.

A solid 7-1 finish put me in a good position for day 2 and I was happy to have day 2’ed again after the disaster that was GP Birmingham, where I ran two consecutive GPs into the ground.

Either way, I got together with some of the Axion guys and we headed out for some truly delicious czech food and were able to enjoy the beautiful city that is Prague.

Day 2:

Round 9: Grixis Shadow 8-1

I sat across a lovely czech player, who told me he was a bit nervous as it was his first day 2 and he hadn’t been playing overly long. I know it shouldn’t have, but that information did make me feel a bit more comfortable. He then proceeded to Mishra’s Bauble himself, cycle Street Wraith, fetch shock and Thoughtseize me… ABORT MISSION, ABORT MISSION!!! Ufff, if I could have chosen one deck I didn’t want to face in round 1 of day 2, it was Grixis Shadow. There’s not too much to say, you have to get lucky to win this match-up. Thoughtseize into threat plus counter back-up is not what you want to see when you’re on KCI. He predictably crushed me handedly game 1.

Game 2 was close, I got to resolve a KCI and put a Scrap Trawler on the board. Unfortunately, I had to pass as I was running out of mana to cast my 2 drops. My opponent untaped and cast Kolaghan’s Command. Outch! I did get my Scrap Trawler back as well as a 2 mana artifact, but this wasn’t good. My opponent passed and I replayed the Trawler and some artifacts ready to start mission find KCI number 2. My opponent played a Gurmag Angler and passed. With Scrap Trawler in play I managed to accumulate enough value to be almost guaranteed to get there on the following turn. I got attacked, opponent passed, and I drew… KCI! Guttural Response his Counterspell and we went to game 3.

I picked up my hand and saw 2 Grove of the Burnwillow, I kept that hand! So, after a few turns of getting Thoughtseized, but managing my opponent’s lifetotal, I was fairly sure that 1-2 cards in his hand were dead. He eventually played a Gurmag Angler, only for me to untap and put Sai onto the battlefield. 1/1 thopters are quite good against the zombie fish.

Round 10: Storm 8-2

Another very tough match-up, as storm tends to just be a turn faster, unless you have a Mox Opal hand. I was on the play, no Mox-hand. My opponent played a turn 1 cantrip into a turn 2 Baral, Chief of Compliance, which was quite awkward against the Pyrite Spellbomb I had held back the turn before. Well, not much I could do apart from developing my board. My opponent untaped and luckily for me did not open with a ritual, but with a cantrip. And another cantrip. At that point I was just thinking: come on friend tap that last land for another Serum Visions, you know you want to! So he did. Well, at least I had a shot. I had a KCI and a few cantrips myself, but no way to recur any of my artifacts. One of the first draws was an Engineered Explosives and it became clear very quickly that there was little point in trying to dig for the Trawler as I would probably not have been able to continue drawing cards after I found it. My priority was then to play the EE for 2 and slow my opponent down at least. So I found myself in the situation where I had about 4 lands and an EE in hand, a KCI, a Mox Opal and a Chromatic Star in play, and some amount of colourless mana floating. The astute amongst you may know what the play is here. You tap the Mox for one colour, then you activate the star which turns off metalcraft and add another coloured mana to the mana pool, to cast the explosives for 2. I saw that line too, but counting to 3 is hard, so when I drew another land from my chromatic star, I looked at my untapped mox opal and passed the turn in disbelieve. Welcome to Punt-land, population me. To be fair I don’t think it made a big difference as my opponent cast Ritual, Ritual, Gifts Ungiven. Even without Baral, I had nothing that could have beaten this.

I am still considering whether I should report game 2 to the European Court for Human Rights.

Round 11: White Hatebears 9-2

I’m just glad no one saw this game 1. The savaging I had gotten the round before must have cost me a significant amount of brain cells. I played this game incredibly poorly. My opponent opened on Plains Aether Vial into Ghost Quarter plus another Aether Vial. I was on the play and lucky enough to have Inventors’ Fair plus the mana to activate it on turn 3 due to a couple of Mind Stones. Now all I was thinking was: Leonin Arbiter, Leonin Arbiter, Leonin Arbiter. For some ungodly reason I didn’t activate my Inventors’ Fair to get the KCI and instead passed the turn thinking I’ll just do it end of turn. THERE IS A VIAL ABOUT TO GO TO TWO SHERLOCK! The Vial ticked up, my opponent did nothing, I was staring at it in disbelieve while considering all the thing that are wrong in the world, including my plays in this game. OK, so I had to shake it off, mistakes were made, I would just have to wait until he taped the vial. So I drew a card, added very little to the board as I needed to keep up the Inventors’ Fair plus four mana as I was still horribly aware of the opposing Ghost Quarter. I passed the turn, and my opponent obviously did not tap his vial, rats! Upkeep, one vial ticked up to three, then the other ticked up to two, opponent draws a card… Yup, there was another chance missed. At this point the monkey with the cymbals in my head was just playing too damn loud. The opponent put out some pressure in the form of a Blade Splicer and Flickerwisp. Some turns went by and I finally had enough mana to pay for a potential arbiter. My opponent didn’t have it and I won. Apologies to my opponent and the magic world! Anyway, I realised that I was letting loose and only lucked out to win that game, time to tighten up! Opponent lead on vial into vial again. My hand had 2 Nature’s Claim and I decided to buy myself some time and targeted the first vial which was on 1. My opponent then played a Rest in Peace, which got hit by the second claim. A bit of back and forth, my opponent ticked the vial up to 4, with some pressure in play, but at that point there was little he could do about my KCI.

This was by far the worst round I had played up to this point. I let myself go a bit after losing in round 10. After the loss, my ambitions took a bit of a hit and reality started kicking in, which is probably why I played round 11 so poorly. Managing a win there, and managing a win in the following round (spoilers) made me get back into focus-mode and I was ready to put up a good finish.

Round 12: Hardened Scales 10-2

This match went similar to the one in day 1, in that Sai, Master Thopterist was the piece that put me over the edge. Nothing too noteworthy happened in the match, apart from maybe when I played Explosives for 0, my opponent decided to save his Hangarback Walker over his Walking Ballista, which meant that Sai wasn’t dying anytime soon.

Round 13: Humans 11-2

Another Humans matchup. Despite beating it twice day 1, I feel the matchup is not amazing. They have so much main deck disruption and a fast clock, the only saving grace is that Engineered Explosives is incredibly good against them. Speaking of which, a well timed Explosives, returning my KCI to my hand from the dying grasps of a Kitesail Freebooter, sured up game 1.

Game 2 went all kinds of wrong, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben and Gaddock Teeg made it impossible for me to do anything, I didn’t find a Lightning Bolt in time and died with both KCI and Explosives in hand.

Game 3, I was on the play. Once again, I found myself with an Explosives in hand (I know I know, must be nice), so the plan was to get it out before my opponent could mess with it. All, or rather, most of the humans hate comes in the form of 2 mana creatures, so getting out the EE for 2 on turn 2 was instrumental in slowing my opponent down just enough to dig into the combo.

11 and 2, I was doing well! But 2 more rounds to go. At this point I wasn’t too bothered, as I was pretty sure to cash with an 11-4 finish, but there were 2 things I wanted to desperately avoid. One is to have a repeat of round 11 – JESUS! The other one being that if I managed to win the next round, not have a repeat of Lille 2016, where I hilariously lost my win-and-in against a much better player than myself, Kevin Grove.

Round 14: Hollow One 12-2

We started off in true Hollow One fashion with a turn 1 Burning Inquiry, but my opponent discarded a Hollow One and thus did not manage to develop enough damage early on to beat me down before I resolved KCI.

Game 2 was quite the opposite and I cannot manage the incoming beatdown enough.

The decider! Very exciting, everything is incredibly tense, the pressure is on! Well… my opponent mulliganed to 5, put a Leyline of the Void into play, which got Nature’s Claimed, he then passed without playing a land, and concedes a turn later. Yeah, that was anti-climactic, I know.

Round 15: UW Control 13-2 – Feature Match

I was on table 4 at this point, and very much aware that this was a straight win-and-in, as my breakers were quite good due to me getting paired up earlier in the day. It was the first time for me being on a feature match, so I was trying to stay calm and avoid the inevitable f-up. I was of course a bit nervous but tried to stay level-headed, until about my 3rd game action where I taped 3 mana to crack a Terrarion and announced that I had 2 green floating. Someone needed to wake me up, seriously. Obviously this wasn’t a big issue and after some clarification, the right mana was in the pool. Still, let’s just tighten this up a bit please. I had an incredibly good hand in the matchup, I was on the play with a turn 3 KCI which played around a Logic Knot for 1. I couldn’t have wished for anything better, so of course I played the KCI, get it Negated. My opponent then killed my two Mind Stones with a Detention Sphere, and I just laughed out loud. This was not starting well.

Game 2 then. Well, the game goes reasonably long, and I got my KCI Spell Queller’ed at some point. I found an EE, managed to play it for 3 and had 2 mana up to activate it, but instead passed the turn. I had played against Humans 3 times that weekend and had gotten a lot of cards taken with Kitesail Freebooter. I know it’s not an excuse, but that is what happened. I one hundred percent thought the card would go back to my hand. And yes, twitch chat, I do actually know how Spell Queller works, it happens. To be fair even if my opponent had had a Cryptic Command for the KCI when I did blow up my EE end of his turn, I had enough mana to get it back with Buried Ruin and cast it again on the same turn.

Then game 3. I had a Dispel, a Defense Grid and a KCI. Dispel countered Cryptic Command and I was in the top8 and just a bit excited for it :).

You can watch the full feature match here, starting at 07:13:49, and game 3 (post deck check) starts at 07:54:15.

Top8:

Well, top8-ing a GP, that’s something new. I was very excited, but exhausted too. I had been putting lots of triggers on the stack for the better part of 2 days after all. Fully aware of how Spell Queller worked, I was ready and took a look at the top8 decks. It was pretty clear that I was not necessarily in a good position. I had managed to avoid Bant Spirits all weekend, but as it was one of my losses the previous weekend, I knew it wasn’t a good matchup. The decks in the top8 apart from the 2 Spirits lists, that I needed to avoid, were 2 Humans lists, 1 Infect, 1 Jeskai Control and 1 Hardened Scales. Of all of these I was only really confident to play against Hardened Scales, so it was sure to be a tough top8. At least I had nothing to lose, but everything to win!

Quarter Finals: Javier Dominguez – Jeskai Control

Great, I got to play against the Platinum Pro of the bunch. At least he appeared to be a very nice guy! This not being bad enough, he was on Jeskai Control, which is not the greatest of matchups. Similar to UW, they can sit back, relax and counter your 4 drops. Game 1, he Negated my first KCI, cast Path to Exile on my Retriever and generally started to get into savage mode. A second KCI was Snapcaster Mage – Negated and things did not look good for the home team. A turn later and a Buried Ruin activation later, and the third KCI stuck! This was my chance! If my KCI resolved and my Jeskai opponent had mana up, I knew that my creatures were in danger. So, I tried to put as many artifacts into play as possible, before playing the Scrap Trawler, so that when it did get targeted by a removal spell, I would get as much value from it as possible and increase my chance to hit a second Trawler. Naturally, once the first trigger went on the stack with Trawler in play, a Lightning Helix was pointed at old Scrappy T. I sacrificed as many things as I could in response, getting as many triggers as possible. Lastly, sacrificing the Trawler to return an Ichor Wellspring and I had a full grip of cards. No Trawler yet, but a few cycles later and the value train was in full swing once more. I only had one more Retriever in the deck, but luckily Javier saved us both some time and we went to sideboarding.

I noticed he wasn’t playing any targets for my Nature’s Claims, which was nice on the one hand, as I didn’t need to bring those in, but on the other hand, he had 3 Surgical Extraction, which pose quite the issue. I brought in all my alternate win-cons and we started for game 2. He opened strongly with a Logic Knot into a drawstep Vendilion Clique. He took my KCI and left me with some nonsense that didn’t do anything. However, the card he drew me into was Sai, Master Thopterist. I didn’t quite have the mana to cast it as I first needed to take a turn off to play a Chromatic Sphere. Javier crucially missed his 4th land drop, but played a cantrip leaving 1U up. I proceeded to make a Sai with a 1/1 token on my turn. He didn’t find a removal spell for the Sai and the following turn I had 4 tokens in play. Let the beatdown begin. This was not a good position for Javier, he probably sided out his Supreme Verdicts and had few outs. He did find a removal spell for Sai and the 4 tokens became ever more beatable. A few turns of beatdown follow when I eventually found myself with 2 KCI and a land in hand. I cast one, having 3 mana remaining. Javier asked me about 3 times to confirm that I hadn’t played a land that turn, so he was reading me like an open book. The man played a Snapcaster Mage targeting Path to Exile, with the trigger on the stack, he countered my KCI, and with the Snapcaster trigger still on the stack surgicals my KCIs. Wonderful sequencing, I should have played a blue deck for this GP! Despite all that, the thopter tokens are too strong and I was into the semis.

Semi Finals: Theau Mery – Humans

The first thing I noticed when I looked at Theau’s deck list before game 1, was the 1 Kambal, Consul of Allocation in the sideboard, and I thought to myself, I am probably going to lose to that.

Game 1 was pretty uneventful, Theau had I believe 7 Meddling Mages in play and I knew who he was voting for for this years’ Hall of Fame class.

Game 2, my hand looked similar to that of round 13, with the potential of my EE for 2 to go under and hit the board before Meddling Mage or Gaddock Teeg could object. Did I mention Kambal? Yeah, he played a turn 2 Kambal, Consul of Allocation. My only hope was to play a KCI while I could and dig for a Lightning Bolt. I found a second EE and managed to stop at around 12 life with an EE 3 in play. Together with the one on 2, I felt quite safe, so I took an extra hit on the attack to make sure he couldn’t play anything else with CMC 2 or 3 that turn. He then played three one drops and had a massive Champion of the Parish on board. Let’s just say my hand did not line up well against his, and I got my face well kicked in.

Out – I came 4th, and couldn’t be happier, especially since Hardened Scales won the GP.

Yes, it may not have been the cleanest performance, looking at you Spell Queller, but overall I felt that I played well throughout the tournament, but also got lucky on a few occasions. Such is the way with GPs, there is some luck, some skill, and then maybe a bit of victory as well.

Cheers to all the London players for all the super serious testing and cheers to the team Axion players for supporting me on the day. Seems like Luxembourg got another face on the Pro Tour, I’m coming for you Steve 😉

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