Finding a Playmat – A Tale of Devotion

It all started with this .

Actually, I’m getting ahead of myself. It all started with this:

On my way to the last #WMCQ in the Netherlands. Lost my playmat already, but it's a beautiful morning, so hopefully I #runaverage . #mtg — Jay Lansdaal (@iLansdaal) June 2, 2013

You see, I was fond of that playmat. It reminded me of my first Team Sealed GP, of a grinder where I lost in the finals to a better player, helping me to focus and play better.

The WMCQ, if you’ve read my last article, went well, but ended on a somewhat sour note. Having lost the playmat didn’t help. So, one of my friends posted in our group chat:

“Hey, Jay, there’s a PTQ a couple hours away in two weeks; go get a new playmat there! :P”

A smiley face, because this PTQ was far enough away that we didn’t really consider going. However, as the day came closer, we all started talking to each other as if we were going, and… we just went.

The five of us were all on GWx decks, with Joris (my aggro-loving testing partner) being the only one favoring red over black. He played basically Edel’s list with some changes to the sideboard, after concluding it really wasn’t Naya Blitz’s time despite constantly being one step ahead of other Naya players. Practice makes perfect, and he practiced with Blitz a lot. With all the Reckoners running around, it wasn’t enough to convince him to stick with the deck. Junk Aristocrats’ gaining a lot of popularity didn’t help either. He almost regretted his decision after starting off 0-2, but he rattled off six straight wins to finish 14th.

Marco, my other testing buddy, usually played whatever weird decklist I gave him. In the WMCQs he first played a Fog Control list to a decent finish; then he played Aristocrats with [card]Mark of Mutiny[/card] over [card]Blasphemous Act[/card] to another decent finish and UWR Auras in the last WMCQ, once again, to a decent but not spectacular finish. This time, he decided he was going to play the Junk Aristocrats deck I wrote about here, with some minor changes I recommended. Unsurprisingly, he played it to a decent finish but not a spectacular one. So far, he’s been the most consistent out of our team, but for tournaments where only the top spot matters, it’s not the best quality to have.

Two other players from my local store also went to the PTQ, playing Junk Aristocrats and Junk Reanimator. They were less successful, but both had a great time.

Myself? This is where we finally catch up to the start of this article. I played this:

[Deck title=Junk Tokens by Jay Lansdaal – Top 8 at PTQ Eindhoven]

[Creatures]

*4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim

*1 Mayor of Avabruck

*4 Voice of Resurgence

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Call of the Conclave

*4 Intangible Virtue

*1 Selesnya Charm

*4 Lingering Souls

*2 Midnight Haunting

*1 Rootborn Defenses

*1 Putrefy

*4 Advent of the Wurm

*2 Garruk Relentless

*3 Increasing Devotion

*1 Collective Blessing

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*3 Forest

*1 Gavony Township

*4 Godless Shrine

*1 Isolated Chapel

*4 Overgrown Tomb

*4 Sunpetal Grove

*4 Temple Garden

*2 Woodland Cemetery

*1 Vault of the Archangel

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*2 Deathrite Shaman

*1 Purify the Grave

*1 Abrupt Decay

*2 Ray of Revelation

*2 Renounce the Guilds

*1 Selesnya Charm

*1 Centaur Healer

*1 Sin Collector

*1 Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

*1 Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice

*2 Profit // Loss

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

Ninety-five percent (if not more) of this deck, I took from Michael Jacob. My interest was piqued when I saw the daily result on MTGO Stats, and it greatly increased when I first saw Jacob curve [card]Avacyn’s Pilgrim[/card] into [card]Lingering Souls[/card] into flashback Souls plus [card]Intangible Virtue[/card]. That nut draw is very hard to beat for most decks in Standard, as it is great both offensively as defensively. [card]Burning-Tree Emissary[/card] into Burning-Tree Emissary? Move over. I had four 2/2s off of two cards!

While I generally dislike midrange decks, the average power level of your cards is very high. Your average draws will easily beat (almost) everybody else’s average draws and will probably beat their above-average draws as well.

However, it is still a deck full of good cards that needs a critical mass of two elements: tokens and anthems (or twice as many tokens). This leaves very little room for interaction outside of the combat step. You rarely need the interaction, though, because you generally dominate that same combat step.

The issue lies with decks like Reanimator, which can both nutdraw you and have a very strong endgame against you. You can beat an [card]Angel of Serenity[/card], but it takes a lot of work, and you can almost never beat an early (turn-four or -five) Angel. You simply don’t have enough interaction, and it’s hard to correct without diluting the deck so much that you’ll simply ruin it. If you expect a ton of Reanimator, don’t play this deck. You can definitely win, but the matchup is not in your favor.

Back to the good news, though: this deck is very strong against almost everything else. In the PTQ, I beat something I don’t remember (it was that easy), Jund, BG Midrange, Bant Hexproof, four-color Reanimator, and Bant flash, and I lost to Junk Reanimator before drawing into the top eight. It’s a variety of decks, and not even many aggro decks, which I consider one of the stronger matchups this deck has. I even considered playing the last round for a higher seed because I knew the guy I was playing was on Naya Blitz. I ultimately decided against it, because I figured he could help me by beating any Reanimator decks that could show up in the top eight. Plus, I really needed to secure a new playmat. (Funny how my computer keeps wanting to correct that to “playmate”-does that say anything about me? Or my computer’s software?)

Having won said playmat, I quickly lost a game to Junk Aristocrats after a reasonable hand did not pan out as I would’ve liked it to. I had a hand with lands and a couple of non-[card]Lingering Souls[/card] token-makers and ended up dying to his [card]Lingering Souls[/card] without ever drawing flyers of my own or an anthem to race. The second game, I shipped a hand of five lands, an [card]Advent of the Wurm[/card], and a [card]Call of the Conclave[/card] to first see six shockduals; then five spells; then three land and a Virtue and never drawing a single creature until I died with a bunch of lands and two Virtues in play.

At least I can look at Ral Zarek’s smug smile the next time I play in a tournament?

As for the deck itself, it performed about how I expected it. There are definitely some spots where it can be improved, though, and I’m starting here next:

[Deck title=Junk Tokens by Jay Lansdaal]

[Creatures]

*4 Avacyn’s Pilgrim

*2 Mayor of Avabruck

*1 Mikeaus, the Lunarch

*4 Voice of Resurgence

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*4 Call of the Conclave

*4 Intangible Virtue

*1 Selesnya Charm

*4 Lingering Souls

*2 Midnight Haunting

*4 Advent of the Wurm

*2 Garruk Relentless

*3 Increasing Devotion

*1 Collective Blessing

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*3 Forest

*1 Gavony Township

*4 Godless Shrine

*1 Isolated Chapel

*4 Overgrown Tomb

*4 Sunpetal Grove

*4 Temple Garden

*2 Woodland Cemetery

*1 Vault of the Archangel

[/Lands]

[Sideboard]

*1 Appetite for Brains

*2 Deathrite Shaman

*1 Duress

*1 Abrupt Decay

*2 Ray of Revelation

*2 Renounce the Guilds

*1 Selesnya Charm

*1 Centaur Healer

*1 Putrefy

*1 Trostani, Selesnya’s Voice

*2 Profit // Loss

[/Sideboard]

[/Deck]

I liked the Mayor more than I disliked it whenever I had it in play, so I’m going to try to see if a second copy works. I’m afraid drawing both is pretty bad, but I wouldn’t mind drawing one more often during testing. As another anthem effect, I suggested Mikaeus to Michael Jacob, and it seemed good to me on one of his recent streaming sessions. (If you want to find out how the deck works, or see a much better player than me talk about and play with the deck, check out his twitch account Darkest_Mage.) I’ll be trying a singleton for now as well. To make room, I cut the [card]Rootborn Defenses[/card], which was fine but less spectacular in a field full of [card]Voice of Resurgence[/card]s, and I moved the [card]Putrefy[/card] to the sideboard in place of the Sorin, which really never performed.

The problem with Sorin-even though it seems like a perfect fit for the deck (it makes tokens, and makes tokens bigger!)-is that he’s almost always a four mana enchantment that gives your team +1/+0 and gives you between one and life, basically an [card]Orcish Oriflamme[/card]. Would you play Orcish Oriflamme? Right, only if it were from Alpha. I do want extra anthems, though, because they make life much easier. I was even boarding in [card]Profit // Loss[/card], just to be able to have a cheap anthem for the turn, instead of boarding in Sorin. That’s when I realized Sorin really shouldn’t be in the 75.

Sorin doesn’t help you at all when you don’t have tokens, and the Vampires are just not relevant. I’d rather have another threat in that case. That’s why Mayor is decent, despite not many of your creatures being Humans. It can create an army on its own, and you actually have a bunch of instants to flip him easily without a loss of tempo. It does pump your Pilgrims and the tokens from [card]Increasing Devotion[/card], the latter of which are very relevant. Mikaeus is similar, in that it can be a threat on its own too. It might not provide you with an army, but sometimes an [card]Ivy Elemental[/card] or [card]Chronomaton[/card] is all you need (kudos if you immediately knew what [card]Ivy Elemental[/card] does).

As for the sideboard, I’m still not sure if I like [card]Purify the Grave[/card] or [card]Appetite for Brains[/card] more. You already have [card]Deathrite Shaman[/card]s, so [card]Purify[/card] might be too much of the same in the Reanimator matchup, but an early Angel is much scarier than a late Angel. Appetite is better in other matchups, though, so it probably depends on what you expect to face more.

I saw Michael Jacob play a [card]Blood Baron of Vizkopa[/card] (and he even had it main), which I think is an interesting idea. You have plenty of early plays that can keep you in the game, so a Blood Baron might be more high-impact than, for example, [card]Centaur Healer[/card], on top of being good versus decks like Aristocrats (Junk more than the original). I liked the rest of the sideboard, and will probably keep it this way until the metagame shifts again. Right now, Standard is fairly diverse, and you can’t really go overboard with sideboarding in this deck anyway, so having a bunch of two- and one-ofs is fine by me.

Besides tuning this deck, I have some more spicy brews on my mind, so expect an article on those at a later date.

May your opponents always be surprised when you slam your Wurm on the table,

Jay Lansdaal

iLansdaal on Twitter and MTGO