This week-end Bazar of Moxen organized an Eternal Week-End, and as usual there was an Old School tournament, with the BoM rules, obviously.

Now quick, have a look at that decklist and decide for yourself of its chances against The Book (so-called “The Deck”) :

Mana

8 Mountain

1 Hammerheim

9 Forest

4 Taiga

1 Strip Mine

1 Mishra’s Factory

Creatures

4 Kird Ape

1 Scavenger Folk

4 Argothian Pixies

4 Elvish Archers

3 Erhnam Djinn

Burn

4 Lightning Bolt

4 Chain Lightning

3 Disintegrate

1 Fireball

Hate

3 Blood Moon

2 Shatterstorm

Bonus

1 Wheel of Fortune

1 Chaos Orb

1 Regrowth

Sideboard

2 Falling Star

1 Fireball

1 Shatterstorm

1 Scavenger Folk

1 Sylvan Library

2 Storm Seeker

2 Manabarbs

4 Red Elemental Blast

1 Avoid Fate

No working smartphone this week-end and my old camera doesn’t seem to want to work either, so no pics, sorry, but you’re probably not missing too much.

Anyways.. If you think that deck is rather weak and doesn’t look like much you’re quite right. It had two main underlining principles : 1) play an almost type II deck -as that’s what I’ve in mind these days, 2) still try and beat The Book.

The book’s weakness is quite obvious, at least in typical lists. Look at the world champion’s deck for instance :

Permanent mana sources :

White : 9

Blue : 13

Black : 6

Red : 7

Green : 4

Most lists play a City of Brass in lieu of the plains, but that doesn’t change the math much : if you don’t feed them colored mana through their Fellwar Stones (most lists play one more of those too), especially white and blue, their mana base isn’t sound. At all.

So to start a common thread in the design of this RG Moon deck, its power residing often into what it does not play, it doesn’t play City of Brass, blue, or white. City of Brass would allow me to play some more Mishra’s Factory, which is generally the universal plan but I decided to turn all that upside down and attack the multi-colored decks’ mana by not feeding their Fellwar Stones, and locking them in red with Blood Moon, which would additionally solve the Mishra’s Factory menace, which is so unfair to aggro decks -still had to play Argothian Pixies though, those ones did their job well. Shatterstorm would decimate their Moxes and Tomes. I wouldn’t play any Moxy myself and all would be fine and dandy for my almost Type II deck.

Another strength of the deck is to not play Channel. Not playing that card makes your deck so much more powerful (well, you still have to be able to represent it). In my testing I originally played it. Channel will win you some game in a spectacular fashion. But if you examine it with a cold mind, you realize it makes you lose more games than it wins you. There were just so many times i wished it were just a simple Fireball, that that’s what I ended up switching it for. And yet, if you can keep two cards in hand, its power is still working for you. It combines quite well with the overall impression of weakness of the deck. The blue-mage, control player will think that his only way to lose is if he’s not ready to counter the Channel-Fireball, hence he’ll always keep a counter in hand and keep two blue mana open : that counter will only be used at the last possible moment, it’ll be be dead for the whole game and that mana often won’t be used if it looks like you can play a threat and then Channel-Fireball in the same turn.

Another benefit of the deck is to not play Fork. Fork is a bit clunky, at least in this deck, which needs to close out game quickly and can’t hope to keep its Blood Moon forever (Mox Pearls, Chaos Orbs and Black Lotuses do exist). Yet with the recent unrestriction of Fork, it is sometimes chosen not to play the big power plays like Mind Twist or Ancestral Recall, when you happen to have two red mana open. Or so was the plan, I didn’t ask to check if it worked.

Fisrt round : Great ! The Book. My opponnent (Gwenn De Schamphelaere from Sweden), has a triple-sleeved deck to my humbly double-sleeved deck and that says it all -or so I hope that’s the way he sees it. He plays Beta where I play FBB’s, Renaissances and even some Japanese Chronicles Erhnams. I’m quite happy as that’s the deck I’m gunning for. We split the first games, and in the third game he has an Ivory Tower and fill his hand and then some with a sizeable Braingeyser. Unfortunately I can’t play my StormSeeker right then, cause I had to be active the former turn and don’t have the mana at the time so I let him discard to 7. He uses his CoB to plow my Elvish Archers, which saves his life. My Storm Seeker + Bolt will leave him to one, so I need a burn spell considering he’ll win life with the Tower on his next turn and will most certainly take over from there. No burn spell. It came close, on the other hand winning with just one life point left is the sweetest way to win. He didn’t seem to know to activate his LoA in response to the Ivory Tower trigger, which helped though clearly not enough. 0-1

Next round : Cyril Terroy, The Book. This time my opponent is very unlucky and mulls to 4. I don’t remember how I won game 2, but Cyril got the impression he hadn’t nearly drawn enough removal. I start to tell him that my deck is in part the result of me moving to 95′ type II and he thinks I’m trolling him. Uh, oh. We finish quite early and I scoot around, I see a lot of Book decks, representing a large size of the field. 1-1

Third Round : Sébastien Marier plays a RB Diskless Troll-Hymn-Juzam concoction. I don’t know that first and expect some Order of the Ebon Hand & al., but see no cheap creatures. But first we put down our first seven on the table before drawing them. “Err.. Hmm.. Are you using two different set of sleeves ?” No he says. “Well they don’t look the same. And it’s not even close.” I don’t see any difference, he answers with so much confidence that I go to his side and confirm : they totally look the same from his side. He ends up calling the judge himself although I was ready to play in those funny conditions. It took three judges (most likely because the situation was so mesmerizing, with half the sleeves shining from the opponent’s place, but none from the player’s view (under those specific lighting conditions). Anyway we play as is and he’ll have to change sleeves afterwards. When he plays his Sedge Troll he’s quite happy, as it typically spells doom to a deck like mine. Unfortunately for him I respect the troll (well, I mean that Troll), he hardly believes it when I feed his troll 3 points of Disintegration. Close game, that I end up winning. I haven’t seen any cheap creatures beside Mishra’s Factories, is that accidental ? Against an heavy black deck the plan would be to bring the Falling Stars (which if you haven’t read the BoM rules allow me to deal 3 damage to up to two creatures : great stuff, if you know how to flip cards) but I refrain and just bring in a fireball. I do sideboard out too much Blood Moons it seems as he wins a close game 2 on the back of 3 MFs. High point of the game : I manage to bluff an Archers and Ape attack into a MF. He hesitated a lot but I hold firm. Game 3 was even closest as he finishes me at one life. I’m now 1-2 but that last match got us on the edge constantly : great magic !

4th round : Nicolas Bataille playing Lestrée RUG (you can see his deck-tech there). My Blood Moons are put to use and my more humble manabase pays off, also he doesn’t seem to want to let his Serendibs block my army : Serendib Efreet as a wall isn’t the most comfortable position, but sometimes is a necessary evil. I win 2-1 and am now at parity in matches.

5th round : Matthieu Derothe-Renaud playing White Weeny. This could have been a great match as Mat’ is very nice and the match-up interesting I think, but I have to mull to 5 game 1 and in game 2 I end up full-on mountains in play and full-on green spells in hand. Mat deserves the win for playing a more consistent manabase. 2-3

6th round : Alex. I had seen the guy play at the table just right next to me and said that I liked his deck. His build has many common points with my old school pet deck : Field of Dreams comboing with Millstone and Sindbad, Sylvan Library comboing with Millstone and oh so gloriously with Sindbad (most underrated card of the format ?), Field of Dreams occasionally playing cat and mouse with the opponent’s The Abyss. Additionally my first decently constructed deck was a control-Millstone deck so I really like his style, in fact much more than my deck, which I don’t even like, isn’t representative of my play-style and clearly isn’t performing much. I thought it would be funnier to beat fully powered deck with a nearly type II deck, but nah, let alone the fact that it didn’t get to do much of that, you should always play something you like. Game one my Blood Moon falls down turn 3 and I like my chances. He has a Field of Dreams and I quickly see a Mox Pearl on the top of his deck, I cannot mill it away as I’m not the one playing Millstone -thinking of it, Millstone would be a funny sideboard plan against his deck. Long story short, I didn’t lock him in red for long, the Moon got disenchanted and he took control of the game. Game 2 didn’t see me threaten him much and I let him mill me to the bitter end, cause I’ve milled people all year long in ’95 and I know how enjoyable it can be to finish a library off. GG, 2-4

Underperformer of the Day : Shatterstorm. I did so little with that. I expected to blow out Jayemdae Tome and all rock mana with it all day, but I’m not even sure that happened once.

Shadow cards :

On my side, Blood Moon where are youu ? You’re the reason I play this deck, I played three of you. Ok, it did come up and probably won me a game, neutralized a few Mishra’s Factory -which is the least you could do, bloody Blood Moon!- it also forced disenchants or counters now and then, but the crucial card was mostly a no show.

On the opponents’side : Mirror Universe, never saw one, never heard of one. For all the efforts BoM did to make it work as in the good old days, that’s quite astonishing. That was the card I feared the most coming there. I know how to try to play around it, but it mostly works when you play City of Brass, which is precisely what my deck can’t afford to do.. Probably I’m wrong, but I can’t help wonder if control players were a bit lazy on that one, MU with Mana Burn and death at end of phase is an unbelievable wincon.